Fiction · 1906
The Four Million
The Four Million, first published in 1906, 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
- Tobin’s Palm
- The Gift of the Magi
- A Cosmopolite in a Café
- Between Rounds
- The Skylight Room
- A Service of Love
- The Coming-Out of Maggie
- Man About Town
- The Cop and the Anthem
- An Adjustment of Nature
- Memoirs of a Yellow Dog
- The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein
- Mammon and the Archer
- Springtime À la Carte
- The Green Door
- From the Cabby’s Seat
- An Unfinished Story
- The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock
- Sisters of the Golden Circle
- The Romance of a Busy Broker
- After Twenty Years
- Lost on Dress Parade
- By Courier
- The Furnished Room
- The Brief Début of Tildy
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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.
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