William Sydney Porter is best remembered as the prolific writer O. Henry, whose books and short stories earned him worldwide popularity. The self-styled "Caliph of Bagdad-on-the-Subway," the man beset by personal disasters, the driven, hard-drinking author was a far cry from the dashing young Will Porter who founded an audacious little magazine in Austin, Texas, in 1894. Most biographies tell little of this period in Porter's life, but during his years in Texas Porter developed the distinctive style which characterized his later writings; this was also his last period of unclouded happiness.

Porter's Texas years have been obscured by the author's own refusal to discuss the period, for he remained deeply ashamed of the prison term he served for the embezzlement of $854.08 from the First National Bank of Austin. In his only news interview, in the New York Sunday Times in 1909, the date of his birth is incorrect, and...