Selected Stories

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Penguin, 1993 M07 1 - 544 páginas
Eighty short stories by a master of the genre

O. Henry's comic eye and unique, ironic approach to life's realities are unmatched. These stories—about con men and tricksters and "innocent" deceivers, about fate, luck, and coincidence—have delighted generations of readers. Set in New York and the West, in Central America and the South, they demonstrate O. Henry's mastery of speech and place, and highlight his appreciation of life's quirks.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
 

Páginas seleccionadas

Contenido

From The Four Million 1906
3
A Service of Love
9
Between Rounds
14
An Unfinished Story
19
After Twenty Years
24
By Courier
27
From The Trimmed Lamp 1907
31
The Buyer from Cactus City
35
A DoubleDyed Deceiver
229
A Retrieved Reformation
239
Friends in San Rosario
246
The Emancipation of Billy
258
A Departmental Case
267
The Renaissance at Charleroi
277
Two Renegades
289
From Options 1909
298

Brickdust Row
40
The Foreign Policy of Company 99
47
The Count and the Wedding Guest
53
The Country of Elusion
58
From Heart of the West 1907
66
The Higher Abdication
71
A Call Loan
88
The Princess and the Puma
93
The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson
99
The Reformation of Calliope
105
From The Voice of the City 1908
113
Doughertys EyeOpener
118
While the Auto Waits
123
The Defeat of the City
127
The Plutonian Fire
133
Squaring the Circle
138
The FoolKiller
142
Transients in Arcadia
148
Extradited from Bohemia
153
From Each According to His Ability
159
The Memento
164
From The Gentle Grafter 1908
172
Modern Rural Sports
178
The Man Higher Up
184
Hostages to Momus
195
From Roads of Destiny
207
Phoebe
215
Schools and Schools
308
Thimble Thimble
318
The Moment of Victory
328
No Story
338
From Sctrictly Business 1910
346
The Day Resurgent
353
The Things the Play
359
A Municipal Report
365
Proof of the Pudding
379
The Venturers
388
From Whirligigs 1910
398
The Ransom of Red Chief
406
The Whirligig of Life
416
The Roads We Take
421
A Blackjack Bargainer
425
One Dollars Worth
437
Madame BoPeep of the Ranches
444
From Sixes and Sevens 1912
460
The Duplicity of Hargraves
463
October and June
474
The Church with an OvershotWheel
477
From Rolling Stones 1912
487
The Marquis and Miss Sally
498
From Waifs and Strays 1917
507
Hearts and Hands
519
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Acerca del autor (1993)

William Sydney Porter (1862-1910) published all of his work—a novel and some 300 short stories—under the pseudonym 0. Henry. His talent for vivid caricature, local tone, narrative agility, and compassion tempered by irony made him a vastly popular writer in the last decade of his life. He was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, to ordinary middle-class parents and worked in an uncle’s drugstore as a youth, becoming a certified pharmacist. Like many Southerners after the Civil War, he sought his fortune in the West, holding various jobs (newspaper work, clerking in a land office, a teller at an Austin bank). Charged with embezzlement in 1894, he fled to Honduras, returning in 1897 to be with his ill and dying wife. His conviction was caused more by his eluding trial than by the conflicting evidence of theft. In the Ohio State Penitentiary (1898-1901), he began to write the stories that made him famous. He moved to New York, remarried, and kept his identity a secret from all but a few friends. He is buried in Asheville, North Carolina. He is universally honored for his mastery of the short story and for his humane spirit.

Guy Davenport, a critic and writer of fiction, is best known for two books of essays, The Geography of the Imagination and Every Force Evolves a Form. He has published seven collections of short stories and numerous translations of early Greek poets and playwrights. Now retired, he was a professor of English at the University of Kentucky from 1964 to 1990. He is also a painter and illustrator.

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