O. Henry (1862-1910), Born William Sydney Porter, on September 11,1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina, he was the famous American short-story writer, who wrote under the pseudonym O. Henry, pioneered in picturing the lives of lower-class and middle-class New Yorkers. Porter attended school for a short time, then clerked in an uncle s drugstore. At the age of 20 he went to Texas, working first on a ranch and later as a bank teller. In 1887 he married and began to write freelance sketches. A few years later he founded a humorous weekly, the Rolling Stone . When this failed, he became a reporter and columnist on the Houston Post . He was indicted in 1896 for embezzling bank funds(actually a result of technical mismanagement),and was imprisoned in Columbus, Ohio. During his three-year incarceration, he wrote adventure stories set in Texas and Central America that quickly became popular and were collected in Cabbages and Kings . Released from prison in 1902, Porter went to New York City, his home and the setting of most of his fiction for the remainder of his life, writing prodigiously under the pen name O. Henry. His popular collections of stories included The Four Million; Heart of the West and The Trimmed Lamp; The Gentle Grafter and The Voice of the City; Options; and Whirligigs and Strictly Business. 欧•亨利是一位高产的作家，一生共留下了一部长篇小说和三百多篇短篇小说。他的短篇小说构思精巧，风格独特，与当时其他作家着重表现纽约等大城市的上层社会不同，欧•亨利一直着力于表现繁华都会以及西部乡村里普普通通的“小人物”，描写了美国民众的日常生活以及他们对浪漫和冒险生活的追求。其以语言幽默、结局出人意料（即“欧•亨利式结尾”）而闻名于世。代表作有短篇小说《爱的牺牲》(A Service of Love)、《警察与赞美诗》(The Cop and the Anthem)、《带家具出租的房间》(The Furnished Room)、《麦琪的礼物》(The Gift of the Magi)、《最后的常春藤叶》（The Last Leaf）等。 本书为英文原版，汇集了65篇欧•亨利经典作品，同时配以原版朗读供读者免费下载（下载地址见图书封底），让读者边听边读，更好地提升英语水平。