Sample of authors
Henry, O.
O. Henry was born as William Sidney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina. He later changed the spelling of his middle name to "Sydney". His father, Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. When Porter's mother died of tuberculosis in 1865, father and son went to live with William's grandmother where he was chiefly raised by an aunt due to his father's heavy drinking. As a teenager, he trained at...
Photo: Francesco Da Vinci/Getty Images (c.1992)
Sample of authors
Gardner, John (f. 1926)
John Edmund Gardner was a British novelist. He was born in the village of Seaton Delaval in Northumberland as the son of a clergyman. He briefly attended Cottham’s Preparatory School in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1931, and after the family had moved to Wantage in Berkshire in 1933, King Alfred’s School 1934–1943. He joined the Home Guard at the start of the Second World War and in 1943 the Royal Marin...