Originally published in 1916, this was the first full-length biography of O. Henry, based upon original letters and sources.C. Alphonso Smith (1864-1924) was born and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina, O. Henry's hometown, and knew the writer as a fellow townsman as well as a subject for literary biography. The author of several works on philology and poetics, and of more popular guides such as What Can Literature Do for Me?, Smith was Poe Professor of English at the University of Virginia and spent his last years as head of the English Department at the United States Naval Academy in...

Included in this volume: ESTHER, From the Old Testament, THE HISTORY OF ALI BABA AND THE FORTY ROBBERS, From "The Arabian Nights," RIP VAN WINKLE, By Washington Irving, THE GOLD-BUG, By Edgar Allan Poe, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, By Charles Dickens, THE GREAT STONE FACE, By Nathaniel Hawthorne, RAB AND HIS FRIENDS, By Dr. John Brown, THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, By Bret Harte, MARKHEIM, By Robert Louis Stevenson, THE NECKLACE, By Guy de Maupassant, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, By Rudyard Kipling and THE GIFT OF THE MAGI, By O. Henry.

In this collection, a southerner of high scholarly distinction and wide personal influence, discourses wisely and charmingly on the Americanism of American literature, on Edgar Allan Poe, Joel Chandler Harris, Thomas Jefferson, O. Henry, Matthew Fontaine Maury, and on various aspects of literature in the South. A bibliography of the writings of C. Alphonso Smith is included. Originally published in 1927.

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