城市之聲：歐·亨利最好的短篇小說(英文原版)

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.

歐•亨利是一位高產的作家，一生共留下了一部長篇小說和三百多篇短篇小說。他的短篇小說構思精巧，風格獨特，與當時其他作家着重表現紐約等大城市的上層社會不同，歐•亨利一直着力於表現繁華都會以及西部鄉村里普普通通的「小人物」，描寫了美國民眾的日常生活以及他們對浪漫和冒險生活的追求。其以語言幽默、結局出人意料（即「歐•亨利式結尾」）而聞名於世。代表作有短篇小說《愛的犧牲》(A Service of Love)、《警察與贊美詩》(The Cop and the Anthem)、《帶家具出租的房間》(The Furnished Room)、《麥琪的禮物》(The Gift of the Magi)、《最后的常春藤葉》（The Last Leaf）等。

本書為英文原版，匯集了65篇歐•亨利經典作品，同時配以原版朗讀供讀者免費下載（下載地址見圖書封底），讓讀者邊聽邊讀，更好地提升英語水平。