The Complete Writings Of O Henry Pseud

Author : O. Henry
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1680 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (318 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Complete Works of O. Henry written by O. Henry and published by . This book was released on 1937 with total page 1680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From foreword: "O. Henry" (William Sydney Porter) was a profoundly sincere artist, as is shown, not only in his finished work but in his private correspondence. His worst defect was a fear and hatred of conventionality; he had such mortal terror of stock phrases that, as someone has said, he wrote no English at all--he wrote the dot, dash, telegraphic style. Yet leaving aside all his perversities and his whimsicalities, and the poorer part of his work where the desire to be original is more manifest than any valuable result of it, there remain a sufficient number of transcripts from life and interpretations of it to give him abiding fame. No writer of distinction has been more closely identified with the short story in English than O. Henry. Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Bret Harte, Stevenson, Kipling attained fame in other fields; but although Porter had his mind fully made up to launch what he hoped would be the great American novel, the veto of death intervened, and the many volumes ofhis "complete works" are made up of brevities. The essential truthfulness of his art is what gave his work immediate recognition and accounts for his rise from journalism to literature. There is poignancy in his pathos; desolation in his tragedy; and his extraordinary humor is full of those sudden suprises that give us delight.