Complete Writings, The
Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1917. Item #06427
Edition de Luxe of the Memorial Edition of the Writings of O. Henry
HENRY, O. [pseudonym of William Sydney Porter]. The Complete Writings of O. Henry. With Illustrations by Gordon Grant. In Fourteen Volumes. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1917.
Edition de Luxe of the Memorial Edition. Limited to 1,075 numbered copies (this copy being No. 1035), signed by the publishers. Fourteen octavo volumes (8 15/16 x 6 inches; 227 x 154 mm.). Engraved vignette edition title in Volume I. Photogravure frontispieces (portraits in Volumes XIII and XIV) and plates (including facsimiles), with descriptive tissue guards. Frontispiece in Volume I signed by the artist.
Bound ca. 1970 by Lewis & Harris of Bath (stamp-signed on the verso of the front free endpaper) in three-quarter red morocco, ruled in gilt, over red cloth boards. Spines paneled and lettered in gilt in compartments with five raised bands. Top edge gilt, others uncut, marbled endpapers. Minimal fading to spines, still a very fine set.
O. Henry (pseudonym of William Sydney Porter, 1862-1910), American short-story writer. “An extremely popular and prolific writer, O. Henry is noted for his sentimental, semirealistic stories dealing with the lives of modest people and his mastery of the surprise ending. A North Carolinian by birth, Porter moved to Texas, where he became the editor and publisher of the humorous magazine The Rolling Stone. When he was charged with embezzling funds from a bank, he fled to Central America, subsequently the scene of Cabbages and Kings (1904). He later returned and, although there has been much debate over his actual guilt, served over three years in the federal penitentiary. While in prison, he published the first of his O. Henry stories—‘Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking’ (1899)…Stories he heard in prison were the germs of many of his narratives…But his work is most identified with New York City, which he liked to call ‘Bagdad-on-the-Subway.’ Among the collections of O. Henry stories are The Four Million [1906, which contains his famous story ‘The Gift of the Magi’], The Voice of the City (1908), and Options (1909)” (Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia).
Price: $5,000.00