101 Stories

This large selection of short stories by William Sydney Porter, who wrote as O. Henry, is set mainly in New York around 1900, with others in Texas, Central America, and invented comic locales. Recurring figures include shopgirls, clerks, confidence men, cops, and furnished-room tenants trying to hold a place in the cash economy. Plots are compact and often turn on coincidence, disguise, or a withheld fact revealed at the close. The narration is colloquial and ironic, addressing the reader as an accomplice. Taken together the stories form a panorama of urban hustle rather than a single novelistic action, with each tale complete in itself.

Bound in blue and fawn image blocked cloth. Mid-blue slipcase and endpapers.