STEGER, HARRY PEYTON (1883-1913). Harry Peyton Steger, editor, son of Thomas Peyton and Alice (Scales) Steger, was born at Moscow, Tennessee, on March 2, 1883. In 1889 the family moved to Bonham, Texas. In September 1897 Steger entered the University of Texas, where he majored in literature and classical languages, was editor of the Cactus, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He taught Greek and Latin at Mineola and Bonham and studied Sanskrit at Johns Hopkins University before winning a Rhodes Scholarship in 1905. At Oxford University he was president of the largest debating club, the Arnold Literary Society. He traveled widely in Europe and was correspondent for the London Express and the Cologne Zeitung. Upon his return to the United States, he became literary adviser for Doubleday, Page and Company, New York publishers, edited the magazine Short Stories, and was editor of collected stories of O. Henry (William Sydney Porterqv). When Porter died in 1910, Steger was executor of his estate as well as his literary executor. During research for an O. Henry biography, Steger uncovered an almost complete file of Porter's Rolling Stone newspaper. He wrote the introduction for Rolling Stones (1913), the twelfth of a fourteen-volume set of O. Henry's complete works. Steger died on January 4, 1913, survived by his wife, the former Dorothy McCormick. The Ex-students' Association at the University of Texas collected his letters and published them in 1915.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Alcalde (magazine of the Ex-Students' Association of the University of Texas), April 1913. Frank W. Johnson, A History of Texas and Texans (5 vols., ed. E. C. Barker and E. W. Winkler [Chicago and New York: American Historical Society, 1914; rpt. 1916]). Henry Peyton Steger, Letters (Austin: University of Texas Ex-Students' Association, 1915). Texas Magazine, April 1911.