William Sydney Porter was the real name of the American short-story writer О Henry. Henry was very famous and popular in his day, and he is often referred to as the father of the modern short story.

The Gift of the Magi

by 0 Henry

About the author

William Sydney Porter was the real name of the American short-story writer О Henry. Henry was very famous and popular in his day, and he is often referred to as the father of the modern short story. His stories have been translated into dozens of languages and are included in numerous anthologies. Even today, he remains one of the best-known and best-loved American short-story writers.

О Henry was born on September 11th, 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was three, so he was raised by his grandmother and his aunt. As a child, he loved reading. One of his favourite books was the classic short-story collection, One Thousand and One Nights.

At the age of 15 he left school and started working with his uncle in his drugstore¹, where he trained to be a pharmacist and a book-keeper². At the age of 20 he left Greensboro for Texas and, after helping out on a sheep ranch, he moved to the town of Austin. There he had a variety of jobs. He worked as a pharmacist, a journalist and a bank clerk at the Austin National Bank. While he was living in Austin, he met and married Athol Estes. Two years later, they had a daughter, Margaret.

During his time at the bank in Austin, О Henry started publishing a humorous magazine called The Rolling Scone, which included short stories and humorous writings by Henry himself. When Henry lost his job at the bank, he began working on The Rolling Stone full time. But although the magazine was popular and sold well, it didn’t make enough money to support his family. Henry eventually closed down the magazine and moved to Houston where he started writing for the Houston Post.

A few years after he moved to Houston, Henry was arrested and accused of embezzlement³ at the Austin National Bank. The day before his trial he escaped, first to New Orleans and then to Honduras. He intended to wait there for his wife and daughter to join him and

1 US: chemist orpharmacy

2 person who records a company’s financial accounts

3 the crime of stealing money that people trust you to look after as part of your work

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start a new life. However Athol was too ill with tuberculosis to travel. When Henry heard that his wife was dying, he went back to Texas to be with her, and he eventually went on trial for embezzlement. He was found guilty.

He spent three years of his five-year sentence in a prison in Ohio, where he first started writing stories under the name of О Henry. He left prison in 1901; shortly after this, he moved to New York City, where he lived for the next eight years until his death in 1910. During that period he wrote over 300 short stories.

Henry’s first collection, Cabbages And Kings appeared in 1904. The second, The Four Million, was published two years later, and included The Gift of the Magi. О Henry wrote more than 600 short stories. He published ten collections of short stories during his lifetime, and three more were published after his death.

His stories mainly deal with ordinary people and their lives. Many are based in New York City, but he also wrote about other places, including Texas and Honduras. Many of his stories have a surprise or twist⁴ at the end. His stories tend to be humorous and optimistic, and some, like The Gift of the Magi, offer a moral lesson.

About the story

The Gift of the Magi is one of О Henry’s best-known works. It was first published in a New York City newspaper in 1905. In 1906, it was published as part of The Four Million, a collection of stories which describe the lives of the ordinary people of New York City.

Background information

The story makes reference to two well-known biblical stories about gifts and their significance.

The Magi

The Magi, or the Three Wise Men, were, according to Christian tradition, three astrologer priests who travelled from the East to bring gifts to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. They are also known as the Three Kings. They brought three gifts: gold, incense and myrrh. Each gift had a special meaning. Gold was for a king, incense for a priest and myrrh to prepare bodies for burial.

4 an unexpected conclusion to a story, often containing irony

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King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba

King Solomon is a figure in the bible. He was famous for being a wise and good man as well as a very wealthy and powerful ruler. The Queen of Sheba, according to some religions (including Christianity, Islam and Judaism) was an extremely rich and powerful queen. According to various stories, she visited King Solomon with wonderful gifts and tested him with questions in order to judge how wise he was.

Summary

It may help you to know something about what happens in the story before you read it. Don’t worry, this summary does not tell you how the story ends!

Della and Jim are a young, married couple. They live in a small, cheap flat in New York City in the early 1900s. They are very much in love.

It is Christmas Eve. Della wants to buy a Christmas present for Jim, but she has only got $1.87. She does not think this is enough to buy him the kind of present he deserves. So she decides to sell the thing she is most proud of - her beautiful, long brown hair - in order to raise the money she needs.

Della is paid $20 for the hair. This is enough for her to buy a special chain for Jim’s most prized possession - a watch that was given to him by his father.

Della goes home to wait for Jim to come back from work. She washes her hair and worries that Jim won’t like it now that it’s so short. She sits at the kitchen table with Jim’s Christmas present in her hand and waits for him to come home.

But when Jim arrives she finds that he too has decided to make a sacrifice in order to buy her a special present.

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Pre-reading activities

Key vocabulary

This section will help you familiarise yourself with some of the more specific vocabulary used in the story. You may want to use it to help you before you start reading, or as a revision exercise after you have finished the story.

Describing the flat

Almost all the action in the story takes place in Della and Jim’s flat. Although the flat is not described in great detail, the few details given help us form a clear picture of the young couple’s simple home.

1 Look at these sentences. Match the words in bold, which describe the features of the flat and its exterior building, with the definitions a-к below.

Della sits down to cry on a (1) shabby little (2) couch.

She looks at herself and her beautiful, long hair in a (3) pier-glass. There was an (4) airshaft separating Della’s flat from the flat opposite.

The (5) janitor had his room in the (6) basement at the bottom of the building.

Della could hear Jim’s footsteps on the first (7) flight of stairs.

The (8) letterboxes were on the ground floor in the (9) vestibule.

The (10) carpet on the floor was old and (11) worn.

5 a vertical pipe or tube used for ventilating a kitchen or bathroom

6 the part of a building that is partly or completely below the level of the ground

7 a thick soft cover for the floor

8 a long, low, comfortable seat that two or three people can sit on

9 a set of stairs going from one level to another

10 mainly US: someone whose job it is to take care of a building (the usual British word is caretaker)

11 a small box in the hall of a block of flats where the mail (letters etc) is delivered (in a private house the letterbox is a hole in the front door through which the letters are posted)

12 a long, narrow mirror between two windows

13 an adjective used to describe something that is old and in bad condition

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j) a room between the main door and the rest of a building or house, also known as the hall k) an adjective used to describe something that looks old and damaged because it has been used a lot

How many of these features do you have in your house or flat? Talking about money and the lack of it

Poverty and the importance of money is one of the main themes of the story. Look at the words below and their definitions; which are used to talk about:

14 not having any money?

15 spending very little money?

16 having (a lot of) money?

a) beggar (n) someone who is very poor and lives by asking people for food or money

b) close dealing (phrase) paying particular attention to how much money you spend

c) income (n) money that someone gets from working or investing

d) mendicancy (n) formal: the act of living by asking other people for food and money

e) parsimony (n) not wanting to give or spend money

f) prosperity (n) the situation of being successful and having a lot of money

Main themes

Before you read the story, you may want to think about some of its main themes. The questions will help you think about the story as you are reading it for the first time. There is more discussion of the main themes in the Literary analysis section after the story.

Material possessions

Money and material possessions play a central role in the story. The couple have two treasured possessions that have a sentimental value and beauty which is much greater than their material worth. However, by the end of the story, the two main characters understand that there is something that is much more important.

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2 As you read the story, ask yourself:

a) What role does money play in the story?

b) Why are the two possessions so important?

c) What are they exchanged for?

d) What is the most important gift in the story?

Sacrifice and selfless love

Both of the main characters sacrifice something that is dear to them in order to give the person they love a gift.

3 As you read the story, ask yourself:

a) Whose sacrifice is the greatest? Why?

b) Were the gifts worth the sacrifices made to get them?

c) Were the sacrifices really necessary? Why/why not?

d) How else could they have shown their love? Would it have been as effective?

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