Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of O. Henry

In Short

This volume serves as a comprehensive master index to the complete digital collection of O. Henry's works published by Project Gutenberg. It compiles the tables of contents from his major story collections, tropical adventures, Western tales, verse, cartoons, and personal letters. Rather than presenting a single continuous narrative, it functions as a structural guide to hundreds of individual stories set in New York City, Texas, and Central America. Its enduring value lies in providing an organized gateway to the writer's vast, ironical output and capturing the full landscape of early twentieth-century American short fiction.

The Story

As an index and reference compilation, the overarching progression of the volume moves through the major published volumes of O. Henry’s prose, beginning with his seminal New York story collections and extending through his regional tales, miscellaneous journalism, and biographical artifacts.

The sequence opens with the tables of contents for The Four Million, The Voice of the City, and The Trimmed Lamp. These sections outline the stories of urban working-class life, introducing memorable tales of love, poverty, mistaken identities, and chance encounters among the shopgirls, police officers, and dreamers of New York. The focus then shifts to collections like Options, Whirligigs, and Roads of Destiny, which expand into varied settings and feature famous standalone stories of deception, fate, and humorous misadventures.

Following these urban landscapes, the catalog moves into Heart of the West, detailing stories centered on Texas ranches, cowboys, and frontier hustlers. The volume then transitions into the humorous confidence games of The Gentle Grafter, followed by additional metropolis-centered volumes such as Strictly Business and Waifs and Strays. The narrative structure of the author’s published career culminates in Cabbages and Kings, a linked series of tropical tales set in a fictional banana republic, and Sixes and Sevens, which blends urban satire with Western comedy.

The final phase of the compilation is marked by Rolling Stones, a collection that gathers rare sketches, early satirical drawings, poetry, and personal correspondence. This section traces the author’s artistic origins from his early Texas days, incorporating family Bible records, youth photographs, caricatures from his self-published paper The Rolling Stone, and tender letters to his daughter Margaret. The entire volume concludes by laying out the complete structural framework of O. Henry’s life and work, offering an unvarnished inventory of his total contribution to American popular literature.

How It Unfolds

The urban landscape opens The volume begins by detailing the contents of The Four Million, The Voice of the City, and The Trimmed Lamp. These lists trace O. Henry's exploration of Manhattan's ordinary citizens, outlining titles that feature shopgirls, cab drivers, vagrants, and struggling artists navigating city life.

Venturing beyond Manhattan The index advances through Options, Whirligigs, and Roads of Destiny. The listed titles present stories exploring alternative fates, clever scams, unexpected ironies, and broader travels across the American landscape.

Ranch life and Western frontiers The contents of Heart of the West introduce a distinct regional shift. The story titles focus on Texas cowboys, chaparral romances, frontier maneuvers, and the unwritten codes of range life.

Scams and tropical intrigues The middle listings cover The Gentle Grafter, Strictly Business, and Cabbages and Kings. These sections highlight series of linked tales involving smooth-talking con men, corporate schemers, and political upheavals in coastal banana republics.

Personal archives and early origins The index concludes with Rolling Stones, listing early satirical articles, cartoons, poems, and personal letters. This final section provides a chronological record of the author's youth, family history, and artistic evolution.

The People

Because this volume is a master index of short story collections rather than a novel, its central entities are the structural volumes and recurring character archetypes that define O. Henry's fiction.

• The Four Million: Represents the average working-class inhabitants of New York City. This collective entity seeks human connection, survival, and romance amid urban indifference, facing financial hardship and social constraints, and ultimately demonstrating that ordinary lives contain profound drama.
• The Gentle Grafters: Comprises the itinerant con men, swindlers, and petty schemers exemplified by figures like Jeff Peters. They aim to make an easy living through cleverness and wit, obstructed only by sharp victims, competing rogues, and unexpected turns of luck, usually ending up with ironic twists to their elaborate plots.
• The Western Wanderers: Represents the cowboys, ranchers, and outlaws of the Texas frontier. They seek honor, love, and self-reliance in a rough landscape, contending with geographic isolation and harsh frontier conditions, ultimately showing a mix of rugged independence and sentimental loyalty.

In Its Own Voice

"THE FOUR MILLION By O. Henry CONTENTS TOBIN'S PALM THE GIFT OF THE MAGI A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFÉ BETWEEN ROUNDS THE SKYLIGHT ROOM A SERVICE OF LOVE THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE MAN ABOUT TOWN THE COP AND THE ANTHEM" This opening index section establishes the classic collection that captures the lives and heartbeats of everyday New Yorkers.

"THE GENTLE GRAFTER By O. Henry CONTENTS The Octopus Marooned Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet Modern Rural Sports The Chair of Philanthromathematics" This contents list outlines a series of humorous tales centered on swindlers, con artists, and lighthearted financial schemes.

"Letters that the boy Will Porter brought along from North Carolina to Texas" This entry from the archive section marks the biographical transition of young William Sydney Porter before he adopted his famous pen name.

What It's Really About

At its core, this index demonstrates how a massive body of popular fiction is organized and categorized. It raises questions about literary legacy, the anatomy of short-story collections, and how an author's diverse outputs—from magazine fiction to personal letters—can be systematically cataloged. By laying out the complete titles across multiple volumes, it illustrates the sheer breadth of O. Henry's obsession with human irony, fate, and social variety. It reveals the architectural framework behind a prolific career, asking the reader to evaluate the writer not just by a single famous plot twist, but by the scope of his entire creative inventory.

Why Read It Today

This volume appeals directly to literary researchers, bibliophiles, and devoted fans of classical American humorists who want an organized, transparent guide to Project Gutenberg's digital archives. It serves as a practical roadmap for navigating hundreds of individual stories without needing to search through scattered individual books. Reading through the raw tables of contents offers an intriguing historical snapshot of early twentieth-century publishing trends, popular story titles, and regional humor styles.

The primary difficulty a reader will encounter is that this text is entirely structural and archival—it consists of titles, chapter headings, and illustration lists rather than continuous narrative prose. It does not provide character dialogue or dramatic scenes. However, for those interested in the scope of American short-story history, the development of O. Henry's pen name, or the archival remnants of his personal correspondence and drawings, this index provides an honest, clear-eyed overview of his complete published heritage.