William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer known primarily for his short stories, though he also wrote poetry and non-fiction. His works include "The Gift of the Magi", "The Duplicity of Hargraves", and "The Ransom of Red Chief", as well as the novel Cabbages and Kings. Porter's stories are known for their naturalist observations, witty narration, and surprise endings.

In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically and economically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources. In 1904, American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Guatemala and Honduras under economic exploitation by U.S. corporations, such as the United Fruit Company. Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites. The ruling class controls the primary sector of the economy by way of exploitation of labour. Therefore, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation.