The Gift of the Magi

O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi is a finely wrought tale of marital devotion, sacrifice, and ironic reversal, centered on Della and Jim, a poor young couple who each surrender their most prized possession to buy a Christmas gift for the other. Written in O. Henry's brisk, urban, late-nineteenth-century prose, the story combines sentiment with structural ingenuity, culminating in the celebrated twist ending that helped define American short fiction of its era. O. Henry, the pen name of William S ...