O. Henry was the pen name of American writer Sydney Porter, whose sores, arc famous for their surprise endings, to the point that such an ending is often mentioned as an ‘o. Henry ending’ He was born in North Carolina in 1862.As a young boy, he lived an exciting life. He did not go to school for very long, but he managed to teach himself everything he needed to know. When he was about 20 years old, O. Henry went to Texas, where he tired different jobs. He first worked on a newspaper, and then had a job in bank. When some money was discovered missing from bank, O. Henry was believed to have stolen it. Because of that, he was sent to prison, where he learned to write short stories. Porter’s most productive writing period stared in 1902, when he moved to New York City to be near his publishers While living there, he wrote 381 short stories. He wrote a story a week for over a year for the New York World Sunday Magazine. His language style and the plot twists were admired by his readers. He was called the American answer to Guy de Maupassant in France. Both writers wrote unexpected endings, but o. Henry' s stories were much more playful and they cheer you up. Most of o. Henry’s stories are set in his own time, the early years of the 20th century, and his many stories deal for the most part with ordinary people in New York: clerks, policemen, and waitresses.