Fiction · 1910
Strictly Business
More Stories of the Four Million
Strictly Business, first published in 1910, has been pulled into the Bibliomancer archive: the complete text, carefully cleaned and typeset, free to read online. Its editorial introduction is still being prepared.
Contents
- I — Strictly Business
- II — The Gold That Glittered
- III — Babes in the Jungle
- IV — The Day Resurgent
- V — The Fifth Wheel
- VI — The Poet and the Peasant
- VII — The Robe of Peace
- VIII — The Girl and the Graft
- IX — The Call of the Tame
- X — The Unknown Quantity
- XI — The Thing’s the Play
- XII — A Ramble in Aphasia
- XIII — A Municipal Report
- XIV — Psyche and the Pskyscraper
- XV — A Bird of Bagdad
- XVI — Compliments of the Season
- XVII — A Night in New Arabia
- XVIII — The Girl and the Habit
- XIX — Proof of the Pudding
- XX — Past One at Rooney’s
- XXI — The Venturers
- XXII — The Duel
- XXIII — “What You Want”
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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About the author
1862–1910 · Victorian
O. Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter (1862–1910), born in Greensboro, North Carolina, who worked as a pharmacist, ranch hand, bank teller, and draftsman before an 1894 audit of the Austin bank where he had worked found funds missing; he fled to Honduras, returned when his wife fell fatally ill, and was convicted of embezzlement in 1897, serving over three years in the Ohio Penitentiary. There, writing to support his young daughter, he began publishing short stories under pseudonyms, settling on "O. Henry" upon his 1901 release. Moving to New York in 1902, he wrote prolifically for newspapers and magazines — at his peak producing a story a week — building a body of work, including The Four Million (1906), Heart of the West (1907), and The Voice of the City (1908), known for its ironic coincidences and twist endings, and for finding sympathetic drama in the lives of ordinary New Yorkers. Heavy drinking and declining health marked his last years; he died in New York at forty-seven.
Adjacent records
