C Alphonso Smith

O. Henry C Alphonso Smith

Originally published in 1916, this was the first full-length biography of O. Henry, based upon original letters and sources. C. Alphonso Smith (1864-1924) was born and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina, O. Henry's hometown, and knew the writer as a fellow townsman as well as a subject for literary biography. The author of several works on philology and poetics, and of more popular guides such as What Can Literature Do for Me?, Smith was Poe Professor of English at the University of Virginia and spent his last years as head of the English Department at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.