Hector Hugh Munro (Saki)

Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki and frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. He is considered by English teachers and scholars a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, and Rudyard Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and P. G. Wodehouse.

Besides his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was customary at the time, and then collected into several volumes), he wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire (the only book published under his own name); a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland); and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, a fantasy about a future German invasion and occupation of Britain.

Books in order of publication:

Publications

1899 “Dogged” (short story, ascribed to H. H. M., in St. Paul’s, 18 February)

1900 The Rise of the Russian Empire (history)

1902 “The Woman Who Never Should” (political sketch in The Westminster Gazette, 22 July)

1902 The Not So Stories (political sketches in The Westminster Annual)

1902 The Westminster Alice (political sketches with illustrations by F. Carruthers Gould)

1904 Reginald (short stories)

1910 Reginald in Russia (short stories)

1912 The Chronicles of Clovis (short stories)

1912 The Unbearable Bassington (novel)

1913 When William Came (novel)

1914 Beasts and Super-Beasts (short stories, including “The Lumber-Room”)

1914 “The East Wing” (short story, in Lucas’s Annual / Methuen’s Annual)

Posthumous publications

1919 The Toys of Peace (short stories)

1924 The Square Egg and Other Sketches (short stories)

1924 The Watched Pot (play, co-authored with Charles Maude)

1926–27 The Works of Saki (8 volumes)

1930 The Complete Short Stories of Saki

1933 The Complete Novels and Plays of Saki (including The Westminster Alice)

1934 The Miracle-Merchant (in One-Act Plays for Stage and Study 8)

1950 The Best of Saki (edited by Graham Greene)

1963 The Bodley Head Saki

1976 The Complete Saki

1976 Short Stories (edited by John Letts)

1981 Six previously uncollected stories in Saki, a biography by A. J. Langguth

1988 Saki: The Complete Saki

1995 The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope, and Other Stories

2006 A Shot in the Dark (a compilation of 15 uncollected stories)

2010 Improper Stories, Daunt Books (18 short stories)

2016 Alice Wants to Know (limited edition reprint of the final instalment of The Westminster Alice, originally published in Picture Politics, but not included in the collected edition).

2023 A Little Red Book of Wit & Shudders Borderlands Press