1. ‘The Gift of the Magi’.This is surely O. Henry’s best-known story of all. Published in 1906, it’s about a husband and wife, Jim and Della, buying Christmas presents for each other, without much money to spend on them. 2. ‘Mammon and the Archer’.This story is also from 1906. A retired soap manufacturer named Anthony Rockwall worships ‘Mammon’, i.e., money above everything else. The ‘Archer’ of the story’s title is Cupid, the god of love.3. ‘Memoirs of a Yellow Dog’.In this 1903 story, the yellow dog of the story’s title recounts his life, his owners, and his love for his master (and his dislike for his master’s wife). Man and dog really do have a stronger bond in this story than man and wife.The story is narrated by a yellow dog who lives in New York. He cannot remember any details of his birth but can remember an old lady trying to sell him to a ‘fat lady’ on Broadway. This woman made a fuss of the dog and talked to him in a rather cutesy way, calling him ‘um oodlum, doodlum, woodlum, toodlum, bitsy-witsy skoodlums’4. ‘The Duplicity of Hargraves’.First published in 1902, this story is about the elderly Major Pendleton Talbot and his spinster daughter Lydia. After the pair move to Washington D.C. from the American South, they meet Henry Hopkins Hargraves, a vaudeville actor.However, the impecunious Major and his daughter are shocked, when they go to see a show, to find Hargraves impersonating the Major in front of the audience. Then a man claiming to be one of the Major’s former slaves from the antebellum era turns up and offers to help the pair out of hardship …This 1907 story is among his most famous: along with ‘The Gift of the Magi’ it may be the best-known O. Henry story of all.It focuses on two female artists and their male friend, also an artist. One of the two women falls ill with pneumonia and it looks likely she will die of the disease – she herself believes that she will perish when the last leaf of the year falls from the last tree. We won’t spoil the ending, but we will say that the male friend, Mr Behrman, plays an important role in the story’s twist ending.This 1911 story is a more light-hearted tale from O. Henry, and a pastiche of the popular Sherlock Holmes stories.A man searching for his missing sister in New York realises the official police detective can’t help him. Only one man can: the famous private consulting detective Shamrock Jolnes. As the narrator informs us: ‘The famous sleuth’s thin, intellectual face, piercing eyes, and rate per word are too well known to need description.’ Sound familiar?This 1906 story is a tale of a reunion. Two men who grew up together in New York City agree to meet up, twenty years later, in the restaurant where they last bid each other farewell two decades ago in order to seek their fortunes. However, one of the men, Bob, has become a hardened criminal and the other man, Jimmy, has become – well, let’s not give too much away, other than to say the reunion does not exactly go according to plan.A young typist rents a room in a boarding-house: the topmost room in the house, hence the title of this 1906 tale. Although the coincidences in this story may strain credulity, part of the fun of an O. Henry story is trying to work out what the twist will be before it comes, and here the author uses names and naming as an integral part of this tale, as the young typist, Miss Leeson, becomes more and more poverty-stricken until she literally faints from hunger. But a star will come to her rescue …
This 1907 story is about two con men who go to visit an art collector, and hatch a plan to sell the wealthy man a rare carving. But is the carving – supposedly one of only two of its kind in existence – all that it appears to be? 10. ‘The Ransom of Red Chief’.We’ll conclude this pick of classic O. Henry short stories with a 1907 story with a comic twist at the end. Two men kidnap the son of a wealthy man from Alabama, hoping to demand a large ransom for the boy’s safe return. Unfortunately for them, their hostage will prove to be extremely testing company .
