O.Henry was the pen name of William Sydney Porter, an American storyteller, born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1862. Leo Tolstoy's novels, such as War and Peace, are classics of the genre. 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of his death. Charles Dickens was the most popular storyteller of the nineteenth century. Throughout America, people would gather by the thousands around seaports and train stations when word was coming that a new installment of a Dickens' book was about to arrive.