08 Dec A Literary Gift for the Season
Any time we see someone bring a pocket watch into the pawn shop, we are reminded of a famous short story by O. Henry that is set at Christmastime. Maybe you’ve heard of it – it’s called The Gift of the Magi.
Like many of O. Henry’s stories, The Gift of the Magi has a surprising ending. We don’t want to spoil the surprise for you, if you have not read it, but it is probably safe to tell you that there is a reason why we are particularly fond of this story.
The story isn’t set in a pawn shop, in fact pawnshops are never actually mentioned, but as you’ll see if you read the story, while not specifically stated, a visit to a pawn shop is almost certainly an important part of the story.
O. Henry’s Gift
O. Henry is the pen name of William Sydney Porter, who gained prominence as a short story writer in the early 20th century.
According to Biography “He wrote in a dry, humorous style and, as in his popular story ‘The Gift of the Magi,’ often ironically used coincidences and surprise endings.” He spent time as a freelance writer, a reporter and a columnist, but he is best known for his short stories, which generally revolved around lower-class and middle-class people living in New York.
Like his stories, Porter’s life took a few twists and turns.
He was born in North Carolina. “Porter attended school for a short time, then clerked in an uncle’s drugstore,” Biography reports. “At the age of 20, Porter went to Texas, working first on a ranch and later as a bank teller. In 1887, he married Athol Estes and began to write freelance sketches.”
In 1896, he got in trouble with the law. Although he was probably more guilty of mismanagement, he was charged with embezzling bank funds. He ran – heading first to New Orleans and then to Central America.
“When news of his wife’s serious illness reached him, he returned to Texas,” Biography says. “After her death, Porter 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 (1904).”
Who knows, if he hadn’t ended up in prison, maybe he would never have become a writer and we might not be talking about The Gift of the Magi today. Although it was written more than 100 years ago (The story was first published in 1905 in the New York Sunday World), the story it tells is timeless. We hope you enjoy it. (Let us know if you think a trip to the pawnshop played a part in the plot!)
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