Cabbages and kings
By: by O. Henry
Contributors: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library
Edition: Electronic ed.
Publisher: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries
Published: 2006
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Political fiction; Imaginary places; Fiction
Other titles: Cabbages & kings; Library of Southern literature.
Description: Cabbages and Kings is still a rather unusual book, even after the experimentation with narrative form that has characterized much of twentieth century literature. With Roads of Destiny it was clear that O. Henry occasionally wanted to do new things with the short story form, and not just continue to produce the slightly sentimental shorts which had brought him popularity. He experimented with the form of the short story while continuing to write about the same sorts of subjects in the same accessible style. In Cabbages and Kings it is the idea of a collection of short stories that Henry plays with, writing what is in effect a novel consisting of short stories. Some parts of the book amount to chapters put in to glue the stories together, while other stories have little relevance to the main plot.This main plot is concerned with revolutionary politics in the fictional South American state of Anchuria, particularly the involvement with them of American citizens resident in the country. The President of Anchuria, Miraflores, has fled the capital with $100,000 from the treasury; he must be captured before he reaches the coast. In the coastal town of Coralio, he and his mistress are discovered, Miraflores kills himself, but the money disappears. The only two people who could know anything about it, the American Goodwin who found him, and Miraflores' mistress, now married to Goodwin, are too important to be suspected, and Goodwin is well known for his honesty. As the new president, Losada, begins to show signs that his rule will become oppressive even by the standards of South America at the time, opposition grows; and this forms the background to Cabbages and Kings. However, the best stories as short stories are those which have little relationship with this background, such as the sequence starting with Shoes centering on the young US consul John de Graffenried Atwood. This indicates that in the end Cabbages and Kings fails as an experiment; Henry's craft is so wedded to the short story form of which he was one of the greatest masters that the extended structure does not come at all naturally. The single background is a bit of a straight jacket, and it tends to fragment whenever Henry has an idea which interests him.
Notes: Title from electronic title page (viewed March 19, 2008)

This electronic edition is part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.  It is part of the collection Library of Southern literature.

Text transcribed by Apex Data Services, Inc. Images scanned by Brian Dietz. Text encoded by Apex Data Services, Inc., Brian Dietz, and Sarah Ficke.

A collection of stories set in a Central American town. Each story is loosely connected to the other stories in the collection.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file); 1 file : ca. 404 kilobytes.

Transcribed from: Cabbages and kings / by O. Henry. New York : McClure, Phillips & Co., 1904. 344 p. ; 20 cm.

Funding from the University Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supported the electronic publication of this title.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Text primarily in English with some dialog in Spanish.
Table of contents: title: The proem: by the carpenter; title: "Fox-in-the-morning"; title: The lotus and the bottle; title: Smith; title: Caught; title: Cupid's exile number two; title: The phonograph and the graft; title: Money maze; title: The admiral; title: The flag; title: Paramount; title: The shamrock and the palm; title: The remnants of the code; title: Shoes; title: Ships; title: Masters of arts; title: Dicky; title: Rouge et noir; title: Two recalls; title: The vitagraphoscope.