Delphi Complete Works of Saki (Illustrated)

by Saki

Hector Hugh Munro, better known by his pen name writer ‘Saki’, was a master of the short story, whose witty, mischievous and macabre tales satirised Edwardian society and culture. For the first time in publishing history, this eBook presents Saki’s complete works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)

* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Saki’s life and works
* Concise introductions to the novels and other texts
* All the novels, with individual contents tables
* Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts
* Excellent formatting of the texts
* Famous works such as THE WESTMINSTER ALICE are fully illustrated with their original artwork
* All the short story collections, including the rare last short story collection THE SQUARE EGG AND OTHER SKETCHES
* Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the short stories
* Easily locate the stories you want to read
* Includes Saki’s rare plays – available in no other digital collection
* Includes Saki’s historical work - spend hours exploring the author’s diverse oeuvre
* Features a bonus biography, penned by the author’s sister - discover Saki’s personal and literary life
* Scholarly ordering of texts into chronological order and literary genres

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CONTENTS:

The Novels
THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON
WHEN WILLIAM CAME

The Parody
THE WESTMINSTER ALICE

The Short Story Collections
INTRODUCTION TO SAKI’S STORIES
REGINALD
REGINALD IN RUSSIA
THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS
BEASTS AND SUPER-BEASTS
THE TOYS OF PEACE
THE SQUARE EGG AND OTHER SKETCHES
AN UNCOLLECTED STORY

The Short Stories
LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

The Plays
THE DEATH-TRAP
KARL-LUDWIG’S WINDOW
THE WATCHED POT

The Non-Fiction
THE RISE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE

The Biography
BIOGRAPHY OF SAKI by Ethel Munro

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Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Humor, Literature, British Literature, Comedy

Kindle Edition

Published February 4, 2016

About the author

British writer Hector Hugh Munro under pen name Saki published his witty and sometimes bitter short stories in collections, such as The Chronicles of Clovis (1911).

His sometimes macabre satirized Edwardian society and culture. People consider him a master and often compare him to William Sydney Porter and Dorothy Rothschild Parker. His tales feature delicately drawn characters and finely judged narratives. "The Open Window," perhaps his most famous, closes with the line, "Romance at short notice was her specialty," which thus entered the lexicon. Newspapers first and then several volumes published him as the custom of the time.

His works include
* 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 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: A Story of London under the Hohenzollerns , an early alternate history.

Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll, and Joseph Rudyard Kipling, influenced Munro, who in turn influenced A. A. Milne, and Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.

Reviews

[Meagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

If someone thinks old books are boring, reads a few stories out of this, and still thinks so, i can only conclude they are crazy person. This is ridiculously funny literature; I love Saki!

[Spike Gomes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saki is like fois gras; in a small plate after careful selection and preparation by the chef, it is absolutely divine, in large doses, one rather feels like the goose undergoing gavage instead.

As the above proves, it's quite hard to be epigrammatic. Saki is the master of the epigrammatic short story. What I find rather interesting is how relatively obscure he is compared with Wilde, Coward and Wodehouse, all writers who satirized the aristocratic and upper middle classes of England. I chalk it up to him having a wickedly cruel edge to his wit, and an unnervingly misanthropic and morbid cast of character underneath the effete dandyism for a wide readership. Also as an added sin, he is far too socially conservative and nationalistic for the liberal readership of our era, and far far too aesthetically gay and disdainful of Christianity to be embraced by modern conservatives like Waugh was.

The one mistake I made with this book was reading it all the way through. Keep this by your bedside and read a couple short stories before sleep (unless weird horror keeps you up, as some of his tales have that edge).

What's rather sad is that he seems to have died before his literary gifts were in full bloom. His later novels and especially his short stories written at the front show a widening of perspective and emotion, far beyond the cruel children, selfish gossipy women and beautiful witty young men that make up most of his earlier body of work. The Unbearable Bassington takes what is usually his set piece for a cynical comedy of manners and then at the very end, reverses it into emotional realism as the real-life consequences of being a materialistic and status driven woman and a charming and witty yet dissipated and directionless young man come to fore in a morose ways other than to make a punchline. Even the last Clovis story has a bit of a wistfulness to go along with the jibing.

Unlike many writers (most of them, I would venture), Saki put his money where his political and philosophical mouth was. He chose to go fight as a private in the trenches of the Western Front despite the fact that his age, fame and social class would all have allowed him far less deadly wartime service. Like a large portion of the young men he spent his time with there, telling stories to keep their morale up, he died senselessly. Like a character in one of his stories, he died in a most ironic way. Shot in the head by a sniper after telling a new recruit to put out his cigarette before their position was given away.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wowie zowie this guy is good. I would not suggest reading this clear through. Saki is a short story author and 900 pages of short stories is a long hard slog of a read, no matter how good of an author he is. And he is good. There were two novels and a couple plays built in too. The novels made my back shiver as I finished each of them. The plays I would love to see performed. Saki is an Edwardian satirist. Given how many off that genre exist, the Edwardian age must have been rather risible. He is darker than P.G. Wodehouse or Jerome K. Jerome, there is no Jeeves to rescue Wooster and the stakes are much higher than a boat ride on the Thames. Bring your sense of humor and proportion. Prepare to learn about human kind, and the inanity and insanity that made the terror of the coming decades possible.

[Jeff]

Saki’s short stories are among the funniest things I’ve read in my life. Imagine O. Henry’s stories, with their surprise endings, as if written by Oscar Wilde — the sentimentality replaced by mordant wit and an utter delight in language and wordplay (“the black sheep of a rather greyish family”).

These little gems — most no more than four or five pages long — are positively addictive. Try ‘The Reticence of Lady Anne’, ‘Gabriel-Ernest’, ‘Tobermory’, Mrs. Packletide’s Tiger’, ‘Sredni Vashtar’, ‘Wratislav’, ‘Laura’, ‘The Scharz-Metterklume Method’, ‘The Lumber-Room’....

-Alan

[Huck Finn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most savagely funny writing I've ever stumbled across. I think it is a book to own, and read a few short stories now and then.

Saki was recommended to me by a Science Fiction author speaking at a book festival. She said that Saki was her strongest literary influence when she was a young reader because he expanded her idea of what literature could be. Not sure exactly what she meant, but Saki has a crazy imagination, and he certainly packs a memorable story into a two or three page vignette.

[Lisa H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my favorite memories involves reading Saki stories aloud to a friend while she drove her VW Beetle (the original ones, not the new type), full of all her worldly possessions, through a torrential thunderstorm outside Philadelphia. The Why of that scenario would take too long to explain, but let's say the whole day was pretty memorable.

[Faye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saki (or H.H. Monro) only wrote a handful of novelettes, short stories, and plays before he was killed in WWI. What little he did write was top-notch quality, full of biting satire and timeless wit. One can only guess what future masterpieces died with him on that battlefield. It's heartbreaking to think about. I have no doubt that he would have been listed among the greatest authors Britain has ever produced.

In a way, though, it's fitting that he would die the way he did. Two of his novelettes (When William Came and The Westminster Alice) showed how strongly he felt about standing up to fight for your country. When William Came (written in 1913) is a somewhat unnerving look at what might have become of Britain if they had sat back and let Germany invade them. The Westminster Alice is a caricature of the government leaders of the day, written as an Alice in Wonderland parody. He was very good at making everyday happenings and everyman opinions look every bit as ridiculous as they really are.

The other novelette in this collection was The Unbearable Bassington. He began it with the author's note "This story has no moral. If it points out an evil, at any rate it suggests no remedy." On the contrary, I think it did have a moral, and if you were reading closely you would know exactly how to remedy the evil it pointed out - Bassington did nothing his whole life but sabotage every chance he was presented to better himself, until finally it was too late. Considering how wittily the story was written, it was quite tragic when you think about it.

I have to include a bunch of quotes in this review, I just HAVE to. The man could craft a sentence like few have ever been able to do -

She came of a family whose individual members went through life, from the nursery to the grave, with as much tact and consideration as a cactus-hedge might show in going through a crowded bathing tent.

Merla was one of those human flies that buzz; in crowded streets, at bazaars and in warm weather, she attained to the proportions of a human bluebottle. Lady Caroline Benaresq had openly predicted that a special fly-paper was being reserved for her accommodation in another world; others, however, held the opinion that she would be miraculously multiplied in a future state, and that four or more Merla Blathlingtons, according to deserts, would be in perpetual and unremitting attendance on each lost soul.

"He's just produced a play that has had a big success in Moscow and is certain to be extremely popular all over Russia. In the first three acts the heroine is supposed to be dying of consumption; in the last act they find she is really dying of cancer."
"Are the Russians really such a gloomy people?"
"Gloom-loving, but not in the least gloomy. They merely take their sadness pleasurably, just as we are accused of taking our pleasures sadly."

"Isn't he at an agricultural college or something of the sort?"
"Yes, studying to be a gentleman farmer, he told me. I didn't ask if both subjects were compulsory."

Quentock was a young artist whose abilities were just receiving due recognition from the critics; that the recognition was not overdue he owed largely to his perception of the fact that if one hides one's talent under a bushel one must be careful to point out to everyone the exact bushel under which it is hidden.

"As an old lady of my acquaintance observed the other day, some people are born with a sense of how to clothe themselves, others acquire it, others look as if their clothes had been thrust upon them." She gave Lady Caroline her due quotation marks, but the sudden tactfulness with which she looked away from her cousin's frock was entirely her own idea.

"My dear Mr. Greech," said Lady Caroline, "we all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other wedded couples they sometimes live apart."

"What is young Storre's profession?" some one had once asked concerning him. "He has a great many friends who have independent incomes," had been the answer.

Tony Luton was a young man who had sprung from the people, and had taken care that there should be no recoil.

He was more quietly dressed than the usual run of music-hall successes; he had looked critically at life from too many angles not to know that though clothes cannot make a man they can certainly damn him.

Joan Mardle had reached forty in the leisurely untroubled fashion of a woman who intends to be comely and attractive at fifty. She cultivated a jovial, almost joyous manner, with a top-dressing of hearty good will and good nature which disarmed strangers and recent acquaintances; on getting to know her better they hastily re-armed themselves. Some one had once aptly described her as a hedgehog with the protective mimicry of a puffball. If there was an awkward remark to be made at an inconvenient moment before undesired listeners, Joan invariably made it, and when the occasion did not present itself she was usually capable of creating it. She was not without a certain popularity, the sort of popularity that a dashing highwayman sometimes achieved among those who were not in the habit of travelling on his particular highway.

"I say, this is a top-hole omelette," said Ronnie. It was his only contribution to the conversation, but it was a valuable one.

She had attained to that desirable feminine altitude of purse and position when people who go about everywhere know you well by sight and have never met your dress before.

Hubert Herlton's parents had brought him into the world, and some twenty-one years later had put him into a motor business. Having taken these pardonable liberties they had completely exhausted their ideas of what to do with him, and Hubert seemed unlikely to develop any ideas of his own on the subject.

Aaaaaand there I should stop, though those quotes were only from the novelettes. The plays would have to be quoted pretty much in their entirety, so I'd better not get started!

In summary: READ SAKI. Good times.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the only sane response, as a writer, to Edwardian England was to skewer it mercilessly. And nobody serves up a finer kebab than Saki. These stories are clever and funny. I think part of their appeal is that, although Munro can be merciless, one always senses an underlying affection for his targets.

[Lynda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost every single story HH Munro ever wrote becomes an immediate favourite. His writing brings to life the mediocrity and occasional poverty of the Edwardian middle and lower classes and the ridiculous oppulence and social ineptitudes of the upper middle Edwardian classes. Always written with a dark humour, Saki has been a firm personal favourite since early childhood when at the age of 7, I was introduced to Clovis in all his cheeky glory, Conradin, the soon to be late Laura and the very late Lady Anne.

[Mikey Campling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me set the tone of this book review with three simple words: I love Saki.

I discovered Saki's writing by accident whilst rifling through a pile of unpromising paperbacks on a second hand book stall, and since then, that battered old book has been with me all over the World. It's a perfect companion for journeys of all types and durations, and a great book to have by your bedside for those days when you're not sure what to read.

Saki is a complete master of the short (and often very short) story. His writing is as light as spun sugar and as precise as a sniper's bullet. If you're the kind of reader who doesn't like to waste time reading unnecessary words, then let me introduce you to Saki, because he clearly didn't want to waste anyone's time.

But there's more to Saki than mere economy of style. His stories are peopled by richly drawn characters and enlivened with Saki's razor sharp wit. In some ways the stories are wonderful period pieces, but many of the themes hold just as true today. There have always been people who've made fools of themselves and Saki takes delight in prodding them with a few well chosen words.

The stories are short but perfectly formed - each one is a satisfying morsel. And they vary in tone so you won't be bored. Some stories are hilarious, some satirical - especially when poking fun at snobs and stuffed shirts, and some are quite dark. But what unites his stories is that they're all entertaining.

Here, I hope without spoilers, is a flavour:

Imagine a man who complains his life is dull to a stranger. The stranger promptly sets out to help the poor dullard out of his rut by bringing chaos to his life. That story is called The Unrest Cure.

In another story, well meaning parents give their children non-violent toys in order to bring them up to be peace loving. Imagine their horror when the children's dark imaginations are played out in unexpected ways. The Toys of Peace.

My favourite is probably The Interlopers - a chilling tale of rivalry and revenge, topped off with a deliciously dark ending. I also have a soft spot for The Reticence of Lady Anne, but I can't tell you anything about that because it's only one page long and I really don't want to spoil it for you.

I hope I've convinced you to give Saki a go - you won't regret it.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of short stories and always read about as many short story collections per year as I do novels, by authors as diverse as Helen Simpson, David Sedaris, TC Boyle, Roald Dahl, Michel Faber, and Wells Tower, to the literary journal McSweeney's. I've heard of Hector Hugh Munro or Saki for a number of years but is one of those classic authors I'd never read that I decided to tackle this year. So how do his stories measure up a century after publication? Not bad, there were a few stories I enjoyed but on the whole they're unfortunately quite mundane.

The ones I enjoyed showed Saki introducing macabre and mystical elements into his tales. "Gabriel-Ernest" is a great baroque story about a boy werewolf while "Sredni Vashtar" is about a boy who befriends a ferret only to create a pagan religion around it, then when his cousin gets rid of the ferret from the house he prays for the ferret-god to get rid of his cousin... then his cousin disappears! "The Peace of Mowsle Barton" is a story of a peaceful village of warring witches while the pagan theme continues in "The Music on the Hill" where an offering to the pagan god Pan is spoiled by an unwitting young woman who is then gored by a stag's antlers. There are also stories of hyenas in the English countryside ("Esme" and "The Quest") as well as talking cats ("Tobermory") all of which I really enjoyed.

Then there are the bulk of the stories which are mostly about young people or children outwitting their elders. These stories are often about slight things like misunderstandings, like a gent who writes rhyming couplets about women, a pet monkey stealing lozenges, a woman transformed into a she-wolf (but not really). They're readable in that they're well written but they're not very compelling and I often found myself sighing at the almost punchline type ending to a story.

Saki comes across as a very smart, self-aware writer of then-modern stories, but the stories don't measure up as well as they once did and as such don't have the same effect on the readers of today. Don't get me wrong, there are some good stories here but there are a number of stories here that don't sustain the level of storytelling or interest. Shame too as I really wanted to like Saki. I guess I just expected more to his work.

[K.N. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saki is definitely someone who should continue to be read and taught. It's been over a hundred years since most of his work has been written, yet his humor and insight are more than relevant now. I laughed out loud several times while I read through this 900+ page collection.

I wrote separate reviews for the novellas/novels at the beginning of the collection. My review of When William Came is here. I was not a fan. My review of The Unbearable Bassington is here. I am a mega-fan for Bassington.

I can't say much else about why I loved this collection as much as I did, not coherently anyway, so I'm going to finish this review with the collection of quotes I highlighted and compiled as I read.

Awesome Insights

"Time is always something of a narcotic you know. Things seem absolutely unbearable, and then bit by bit we find out that we are bearing them."
- When William Came

"It is one thing to face the music, it is another thing to dance to it."
- When William Came

"Whom the gods wish to render harmless they first afflict with sanity."
- When William Came

"One likes to escape from oneself occasionally."
- Reginald on the Academy

"To have reached thirty," said Reginald, "is to have failed in life."
- Reginald on the Academy

"Trouble is not one of those fancies you can take up and drop at any moment; it's like a grouse-moor or the opium-habit - once you start it you've got to keep it up."
- Reginald at the Carlton

"The English have a proverb, 'Conscience makes cowboys of us all.'"

"I didn't know Wratislav had a conscience."

"My dear Sophie, he hasn't. It's other people's consciences that send one abroad in a hurry."
- Wratislav

"Each feels that she has nursed a viper in her bosom. Nothing fans the flame of human resentment so much as the discovery that one's bosom has been utilised as a snake sanatorium."
- The Hen

It was, of course, deplorable that any one should treat the truth as an article temporarily and excusably out of stock...
- Quail Seed

"Children with Hyacinth's temperament don't know better as they grow older; they merely know more."
- Hyacinth

Brilliant Character Descriptions

"Comus," she said quietly and wearily, "you are an exact reversal of the legend of Pandora's Box. You have all the charm and advantages that a boy could want to help him in the world, and behind it all there is the fatal damning gift of utter hopelessness."

"I think," said Comus, "that is the best description that anyone has ever given of me."
- The Unbearable Bassington

[Reginald] was reclining in a comfortable chair with the dreamy, far-away look that a volcano might wear just after it had desolated entire villages.
- Reginald

In a world that is supposed to be chiefly swayed by hunger and by love Mrs. Packletide was an exception; her movements and motives were largely governed by dislike of Loona Bimberton.
- Mrs. Packletide's Tiger

"I suppose we are in some danger?" said Miss Mebbin.

She was not actually nervous about the wild beast, but she had a morbid dread of performing an atom more service than she had been paid for.
- Mrs. Packletide's Tiger

Whatever good qualities Lester Slaggby may have possessed, and he was in some respects charming, courage could certainly never be imputed to him. ... He was frankly afraid of animals, nervous with firearms, and never crossed the Channel without mentally comparing the numerical proportion of lifebelts to passengers. On horseback he seemed to require as many hands as a Hindu god, at least four for clutching the reins, and two more for patting the horse soothingly on the neck.
- The Easter Egg

Most of the aunt's remarks seemed to begin with "Don't," and nearly all of the children's remarks began with "Why?"
- The Story-Teller

The artistic groups that foregathered at the little restaurant contained so many young women with short hair and so many young men with long hair, who supposed themselves to be abnormally gifted in the domain of music, poetry, painting, or stagecraft, with little or nothing to support the supposition, that a self-announced genius of any sort in their midst was inevitably suspect.
- On Approval

Rex Dillot was nearly twenty-four, almost good-looking and quite penniless.
- Fate

"It's like everything else that belongs to her - her car, her dinner-parties, even her headaches, they are all superlative; no one else ever had anything like them."
- The Occasional Garden

In an age when it has become increasingly difficult to accomplish anything new or original, Bavton Bidderdale interested his generation by dying of a new disease. 'We always knew he would do something remarkable one of these days,' observed his aunts; 'he has justified our belief in him.'
- The Infernal Parliament

Wicked Insults / Sick Burns

"I certainly don’t think Elaine is going to be very happy," said her sister, "but at least Courtenay saved her from making the greatest mistake she could have made — marrying that young Bassington."

"He has also," said Mrs. Goldbrook, "helped her to make the next biggest mistake of her life — marrying Courtenay Youghal."
- The Unbearable Bassington

"There are certain fixed rules that one observes for one's own comfort. For instance, never be flippantly rude to any inoffensive grey-bearded stranger that you may meet in pine forests or hotel smoking-rooms on the Continent. It always turns out to be the King of Sweden."

"The restraint must be dreadfully irksome to you. When I was younger, boys of your age used to be nice and innocent."
- Reginald at the Theatre

Until tea-time that day she had been unable to discover in what direction, if any, his cleverness lay.
- Tobermory

"When your inclusion in this house-party was suggested Sir Wilfrid protested that you were the most brainless woman of his acquaintance, and that there was a wide distinction between hospitality and the care of the feeble-minded."
- Tobermory

"Is he anywhere to be heard?" asked Clovis; "if not, he must be at least two miles away."
- The Quest

"My poor Elsa would be miserable with him."

"A little misery wouldn't matter very much with her; it would go so well with the way she does her hair..."
- Wratislav

"Why let her wear saffron colour?"

"I always think it goes with her complexion."

"Unfortunately it doesn't. It stays with it. Ugh."
- Wratislav

Witty Miscellaneous Saki-sms

"...glory hasn't come very much my way lately."
- When William Came

By the time one has educated [aunts] to an appreciation of the fact that one does not wear red woollen mittens in the West End, they die, or quarrel with the family, or do something equally inconsiderate.
- Mas Presents

"If you're going to be rude," said Reginald, "I shall dine with you to-morrow night as well."
- Reginald on the Academy

"Cats have nine lives, you know," said Sir Wilfrid heartily.

"Possibly," answered Tobermory; "but only one liver."
- Tobermory

"We've got some Boy-scouts helping us as auxiliaries."

"Boy-scouts!"

"Yes; when they understood there was real killing to be done they were even keener than the men."
- The Unrest-Cure

"The Boy-scouts mistook my signal, and have killed the postman. I've had very little practice in this sort of thing, you see. Another time I shall do better."
- The Unrest-Cure

"I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English."
- Adrian

"We've lost Baby," she screamed.

"Do you mean that it's dead, or stampeded, or that you staked it at cards and lost it that way?" asked Clovis lazily.
- The Quest

"I found him sitting in the middle of the road," said Rose-Marie weakly.

"You can't take him back and leave him there," said Clovis; "the highway is meant for traffic, not to be used as a lumber-room for disused miracles."
- The Quest

"Elsa has run away with the Rodenstahl's chauffeur! ... Such a thing as that no one in our family has ever done," gasped the Baroness.

"Perhaps he didn't appeal to them in the same way," suggested the Gräfin judicially.

The Baroness began to feel that she was not getting the astonishment and sympathy to which catastrophe entitled her.
- Wratislav

Eshley had painted a successful and acceptable picture of cattle drowsing picturesquely under walnut trees, and as he had begun, so, of necessity, he went on. His "Noontide Peace," a study of two dun cows under a walnut tree, was followed by "A Mid-day Sanctuary," a study of a walnut tree, with two dun cows under it.
- The Stalled Ox

'There seems to be a very great public interest in the debate,' exlaimed Bidderdale.

'Members are excused from attending the debates if they so desire,' the Fiend proceeded to explain; 'it is one of their most highly valued privileges. On the other hand, constituents are compelled to listen throughout to all the speeches. After all, you must remember, we are in Hell.'
- The Infernal Parliament

Some of my favorite stories were Reginald's Peace Poem, Gabriel-Ernest, Tobermory, The Talking-Out of Tarrington, The Recessional, The Boar-Pig, The Mappined Life, and The Pond...

[Magill · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my treasures, a 2nd hand copy that took a nip out of my wallet in poorer days. I have several favourite short story authors including Guy de Maupassant and W. Somerset Maugham, but Saki has been in my heart since school day anthologies included "The Window" and " Mrs. Packletide's Tiger."

H.H. Munro has been often described as malicious, which I have never thought was a good description. Mocking and merciless perhaps, even unforgiving, but not malicious... although Reginald or Clovis, or even Vera might at times. However, he was not afraid of delivering justice or just desserts, but that isn't malicious - that is righteous.

What I find is that a little Saki is not enough. Having recently purchased and read "A Shot in the Dark" which holds 13 rediscovered stories and a non-Clovis Tobermory - it was too brief and unsatisfying and only a complete immersion in the Complete Saki would do. Kind of like a tasting menu of 2 courses - simply not enough to sate the appetite and leaves one unsettled and dissatisfied, no matter how delicious.

While my MOST favourite short story was, and is, "The Storyteller", I find that I like reading the entire canon - that as a whole they balance one another - satire, political observation, irony a plenty, mysticism, just desserts, wit, dissection, all meld into a complete experience. I will note that I reviewed "The Unbearable Bassington" separately, simply because I found it more impactful... in my advancing age, I guess.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterly Story Telling

I encountered the short stories of H.H. Munroe as a schoolboy, and was enticed into the stories by his faultless use of the language and cleverly construction. I have returned to them thirty years later as a nostalgic journey into my teenage fantasy world, with pleasing results. Often light on the surface but with a dark and fruity interior, like a surprise dessert.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

B and N released a great compilation of his works last year that was very reasonably priced. Saki is like having drinks with your most sarcastic, funny, ironic friend -- you leave giggling, with your head still spinning. His stories are all about society life among the rich in England at the turn of the 20th century, and are deliciously mean. Come on, you can't always read about nice people.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls]

Contains the stories:

I. THE STORIES

Reginald
Reginald -
Reginald on Christmas Presents -
Reginald on the Academy -
Reginald at the Theatre -
Reginald’s Peace Poem -
Reginald’s Choir Treat -
Reginald on Worries -
Reginald on House-Parties -
Reginald at the Carlton -
Reginald on Besetting Sins -
Reginald’s Drama -
Reginald on Tariffs -
Reginald’s Christmas Revel -
Reginald’s Rubaiyat -
The Innocence ofReginald -

Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches
Reginald in Russia -
The Reticence of Lady Anne -
The Lost Sanjak -
The Sex That Doesn’t Shop -
The Blood-Feud of Toad-Water -
A Young Turkish Catastrophe -
Judkin of the Parcels -
Gabriel-Ernest -
The Saint and the Goblin -
The Soul of Laploshka -
The Bag -
The Strategist -
Cross Currents -
The Baker’s Dozen -
The Mouse -

The Chronicles of Clovis
Esmé -
The Match-Maker -
Tobermory -
Mrs. Packletide’s Tiger -
The Stampeding of Lady Bastable -
The Background -
Hermann the Irascible – A Story of the Great Weep -
The Unrest-Cure -
The Jesting of Arlington Stringham -
Sredni Vashtar -
Adrian -
The Chaplet -
The Quest -
Wratislav -
The Easter Egg -
Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse That Helped -
The Music on the Hill -
The Story of St. Vespaluus -
The Way to the Dairy -
The Peace Offering -
The Peace of Mowsle Barton -
The Talking-Out of Tarrington -
The Hounds of Fate -
The Recessional -
A Matter of Sentiment -
The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope -
“Ministers of Grace” -
The Remoulding of Groby Lington -

Beasts and Super-Beasts
The She-Wolf -
Laura - 4/5 - otter nonsense
The Boar-Pig -
The Brogue -
The Hen -
The Open Window -
The Treasure-Ship -
The Cobweb -
The Lull -
The Unkindest Blow -
The Romancers -
The Schartz-Metterklume Method -
The Seventh Pullet -
The Blind Spot -
Dusk -
A Touch of Realism -
Cousin Teresa -
The Yarkand Manner -
The Byzantine Omelette -
The Feast of Nemesis -
The Dreamer -
The Quince Tree -
The Forbidden Buzzards -
The Stake -
Clovis on Parental Responsibilities -
A Holiday Task -
The Stalled Ox -
The Story-Teller -
A Defensive Diamond -
The Elk -
“Down Pens” -
The Name-Day -
The Lumber Room -
Fur -
The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat -
On Approval -

The Toys of Peace
The Toys of Peace -
Louise -
Tea -
The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh -
The Wolves of Cernogratz -
Louis -
The Guests -
The Penance -
The Phantom Luncheon -
A Bread and Butter Miss -
Bertie’s Christmas Eve -
Forewarned -
The Interlopers -
Quail Seed -
Canossa -
The Threat -
Excepting Mrs. Pentherby -
Mark -
The Hedgehog -
The Mappined Life -
Fate -
The Bull -
Morlvera -
Shock Tactics -
The Seven Cream Jugs -
The Occasional Garden -
The Sheep -
The Oversight -
Hyacinth -
The Image of the Lost Soul -
The Purple of the Balkan Kings -
The Cupboard of the Yesterdays -
For the Duration of the War -

The Square Egg And Other Sketches
The Square Egg -
Birds on the Western Front -
The Gala Programme -
The Infernal Parliament -
The Achievement of the Cat -
The Old Town of Pskoff -
Clovis on the Alleged Romance of Business -
The Comments of Moung Ka -

II. THE NOVELS

The Unbearable Bassington -
When William Came -
The Westminster Alice -

III. THE PLAYS

The Death-Trap -
Karl-Ludwig’s Window -
The Watched Pot -

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

A better use of one's time would be to peruse the much slimmer NYRB selected works titled "the unrest-cure", featuring illustration by Edward Gorey.
Aside from the absurd names he assigns his characters, Saki's best is simply skewering Victorian convention. He grows tiresome when he sets his sights on merely ordinary life. Too many of the short stories are just dull fare featuring yet another flamboyant mischief-maker.

The plays are passable and the political satire retelling of Alice in Wonderland is mostly unintelligible, which seems fitting I suppose. The short story about a German conquest of England sees him abandon his usual sneering at conventional conservatives to make his protagonist a gloomy, cuckolded patriot while the dilettantes and social butterflies quickly adapt to the new regime. It's amusing for how wrong it was.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started reading this about 30 years ago and only finished now. Saki is delightful in small doses, but reading 900+ pages of him at a time is excessive. Treat him as an exotic spice or a powerful drug: too much at one time isn't good. This really should be regarded as a reference book, rather than read as a conventional collection of fiction.

There's a good chance Saki is the wittiest person who ever lived, and his famous short stories live up to that claim. I was pleasantly surprised by the comparatively unheralded short novels and the plays in this collection; they held their own with the short stories. In particular, I'd like to see the plays performed.

[Marie-Paule · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am more a kind of P G Wodehouse girl

[Hunted Snark · Rating 5 out of 5]

No, wait, I’m not ready!
I can’t review Saki yet, what do I say?

That I’d never heard of him until the Penguin edition, with its soulful-looking lad on the front, caught my attention in a bookshop back in 1996?

That I picked it down, opened it up, read until I got to the line that went:

… they never understood Reginald, who came down late to breakfast, and nibbled toast, and said disrespectful things about the universe. The family ate porridge, and believed in everything, even the weather forecast.

… closed it again and marched off to the register with it?

That I opened it to a random story on the way home and … was never the same again?

Ah yes. That’s it. Saki changed me.

Spoiled me for numerous other authors. Gave me a masterclass in sentence structure, characterisation and brittle humour. Showed me how one can be vicious and feeling and funny at the same time. Showed me miracles of concision. Delighted me with queer sensibility hidden in plain sight. His language seeped into my mind with its quotable lines, acid wit and turns of phrase. And he made me cringe at all the ways that he was so much a product of his times, and then smile at all the ways he wasn’t.

I don’t love every story in this volume. There’s a lot. Six full collections of them. There’s filler, b-sides, pot boilers, and many that I simply don’t care for. A few that are just a bit too sunk into the typical prejudices of a middle class Englishman born in the late Nineteenth Century.

And then, of course, his gift was for miniatures. His tiny, perfect jewel-boxes of stories. The novels and play that comprise most of the last third of the book don’t hold up so well. Of the novels, I’ve only read The Unbearable Bassington all the way through—and only once.

But his best stories are among the finest ever written. And this is my number one desert island book.

…

It’s a common for reviewers and commentators to remark that his stories are amoral or cruel as well as funny. I see what they mean in one sense. Quite a number of wild animals (and the occasional werewolf) dine rather well off innocent and guilty persons alike in his stories. But, if one looks a little below the surface, it’s easy to see the outline of something so much more interesting than stories written to thrill readers with glimpses of savagery.

These are not penny dreadfuls. The wild animals and unruly humans nearly always wreck their revenges on some deserving party. Or are showing up the morals of someone in the story. Either way, someone has usually breached Saki’s internally consistent—if unconventional—moral code. Time and again he punishes or shows up the mean, the thoughtless, the humourless, the controlling, the strict, and the unimaginative…

There’s much to be made of this psychologically. Indeed, a competent biography does exactly that. (AJ Langguth, 1981) (spoiler: Gay. Also sickly as a child and raised by unsympathetic and rather strict aunts.)

But read as an allegory for a repressed and hidden self finding its way into the light, his most famously ‘cruel’ story, Sredni Vashtar, takes on a tone of triumph rather than tragedy. Fairly brings a tear to the eye every time I read it.

He commands high and low comedy, satire, absurdism, and a sharp, observational wit that neither the years nor my constant rereading can dull.

For the record, a very rough top five of my personal favourites in no particular order:
• The Innocence of Reginald (concentrated delight)
• The Recessional (hilarious, absurd doggerel and a touch of gay frisson)
• Reginald in Russia (Reginald trades barbs with a Russian princess, what's not to love?)
• The Dreamer (Cyprian is a quiet gay hero and adorable in every way)
• Sredni Vashtar (Do one thing for me...)

[alex]

The Short Stories

Reginald
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald on Christmas Presents"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald on the Academy"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald at the Theatre"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald's Peace Poem"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald's Choir Treat"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald on Worries"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald on House-Parties"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald at the Carlton"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald on Besetting Sins"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald's Drama"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald on Tariffs"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald's Christmas Revel"
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald's Rubaiyat"
rating: tbd/5

"The Innocence of Reginald"
rating: tbd/5

Reginald in Russia
rating: tbd/5

"Reginald in Russia"
rating: tbd/5

"The Reticence of Lady Anne"
rating: tbd/5

"The Lost Sanjak"
rating: tbd/5

"The Sex That Doesn't Shop"
rating: tbd/5

"The Blood-Feud of Toad-Water"
rating: tbd/5

"A Young Turkish Catastrophe"
rating: tbd/5

"Judkin of the Parcels"
rating: tbd/5

"Gabriel-Ernest"
rating: tbd/5

"The Saint and the Goblin"
rating: tbd/5

"The Soul of Laploshka"
rating: tbd/5

"The Bag"
rating: tbd/5

"The Strategist"
rating: tbd/5

"Cross Currents"
rating: tbd/5

"The Baker's Dozen"
rating: tbd/5

"The Mouse"
rating: tbd/5

The Chronicles of Clovis
rating: tbd/5

"Esmé"
rating: tbd/5

"The Match-Maker"
rating: tbd/5

"Tobermory"
rating: tbd/5

"Mrs. Packletide's Tiger"
rating: tbd/5

"The Stampeding of Lady Bastable"
rating: tbd/5

"The Background"
rating: tbd/5

"Hermann the Irascible—A Story of the Great Weep"
rating: tbd/5

"The Unrest-Cure"
rating: tbd/5

"The Jesting of Arlington Stringham"
rating: tbd/5

"Sredni Vashtar"
rating: tbd/5

"Adrian"
rating: tbd/5

"The Chaplet"
rating: tbd/5

"The Quest"
rating: tbd/5

"Wratislav"
rating: tbd/5

"The Easter Egg"
rating: tbd/5

"Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse That Helped"
rating: tbd/5

"The Music on the Hill"
rating: tbd/5

"The Story of St. Vespaluus"
rating: tbd/5

"The Way to the Dairy"
rating: tbd/5

"The Peace Offering"
rating: tbd/5

"The Peace of Mowsle Barton"
rating: tbd/5

"The Talking-Out of Tarrington"
rating: tbd/5

"The Hounds of Fate"
rating: tbd/5

"The Recessional"
rating: tbd/5

"A Matter of Sentiment"
rating: tbd/5

"The Secret Sin of Septimus Brope"
rating: tbd/5

"'Ministers of Grace'"
rating: tbd/5

"The Remoulding of Groby Lington"
rating: tbd/5

Beasts and Super-Beasts
rating: tbd/5

"The She-Wolf"
rating: tbd/5

"Laura"
rating: tbd/5

"The Boar-Pig"
rating: tbd/5

"The Brogue"
rating: tbd/5

"The Hen"
rating: tbd/5

"The Open Window"
rating: tbd/5

"The Treasure-Ship"
rating: tbd/5

"The Cobweb"
rating: tbd/5

"The Lull"
rating: tbd/5

"The Unkindest Blow"
rating: tbd/5

"The Romancers"
rating: tbd/5

"The Schartz-Metterklume Method"
rating: tbd/5

"The Seventh Pullet"
rating: tbd/5

"The Blind Spot"
rating: tbd/5

"Dusk"
rating: tbd/5

"A Touch of Realism"
rating: tbd/5

"Cousin Teresa"
rating: tbd/5

"The Yarkand Manner"
rating: tbd/5

"The Byzantine Omelette"
rating: tbd/5

"The Feast of Nemesis"
rating: tbd/5

"The Dreamer"
rating: tbd/5

"The Quince Tree"
rating: tbd/5

"The Forbidden Buzzards"
rating: tbd/5

"The Stake"
rating: tbd/5

"Clovis on Parental Responsibilities"
rating: tbd/5

"A Holiday Task"
rating: tbd/5

"The Stalled Ox"
rating: tbd/5

"The Story-Teller"
rating: tbd/5

"A Defensive Diamond"
rating: tbd/5

"The Elk"
rating: tbd/5

"'Down Pens'"
rating: tbd/5

"The Name-Day"
rating: tbd/5

"The Lumber-Room"
rating: tbd/5

"Fur"
rating: tbd/5

"The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat"
rating: tbd/5

"On Approval"
rating: tbd/5

The Toys of Peace
rating: tbd/5

"The Toys of Peace"
rating: tbd/5

"Louise"
rating: tbd/5

"Tea"
rating: tbd/5

"The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh"
rating: tbd/5

"The Wolves of Cernogratz"
rating: tbd/5

"Louis"
rating: tbd/5

"The Guests"
rating: tbd/5

"The Penance"
rating: tbd/5

"The Phantom Luncheon"
rating: tbd/5

"A Bread and Butter Miss"
rating: tbd/5

"Bertie's Christmas Eve"
rating: tbd/5

"Forewarned"
rating: tbd/5

"The Interlopers"
rating: tbd/5

"Quail Seed"
rating: tbd/5

"Canossa"
rating: tbd/5

"The Threat"
rating: tbd/5

"Excepting Mrs. Pentherby"
rating: tbd/5

"Mark"
rating: tbd/5

"The Hedgehog"
rating: tbd/5

"The Mappined Life"
rating: tbd/5

"Fate"
rating: tbd/5

"The Bull"
rating: tbd/5

"Morlvera"
rating: tbd/5

"Shock Tactics"
rating: tbd/5

"The Seven Cream Jugs"
rating: tbd/5

"The Occasional Garden"
rating: tbd/5

"The Sheep"
rating: tbd/5

"The Oversight"
rating: tbd/5

"Hyacinth"
rating: tbd/5

"The Image of the Lost Soul"
rating: tbd/5

"The Purple of the Balkan Kings"
rating: tbd/5

"The Cupboard of the Yesterdays"
rating: tbd/5

"For the Duration of the War"
rating: tbd/5

The Square Egg
rating: tbd/5

"The Square Egg"
rating: tbd/5

"Birds on the Western Front"
rating: tbd/5

"The Gala Programme"
rating: tbd/5

"The Infernal Parliament"
rating: tbd/5

"The Achievement of the Cat"
rating: tbd/5

"The Old Town of Pskoff"
rating: tbd/5

"Clovis on the Alleged Romance of Business"
rating: tbd/5

"The Comments of Moung Ka"
rating: tbd/5

The Novels

The Unbearable Bassington
rating: tbd/5

When William Came
rating: tbd/5

The Westminster Alice
rating: tbd/5

The Plays

The Death-Trap
rating: tbd/5

Karl-Ludwig's Window
rating: tbd/5

The Watched Pot (co-written with Charles Maude)
rating: tbd/5

[ShanDizzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saki's biting sarcastic descriptions are sometimes scathing and 'wince-worthy' but it still doesn't stop you from laughing out loud and committing it to memory.

Hostesses regarded her philosophically as a form of social measles which everyone had to have once.


At athletics in general he was a showy performer, and although new to the functions of a prefect he had already established a reputation as an effective and artistic caner. In appearance he exactly fitted his fanciful Pagan name. His large green-grey eyes seemed forever asparkle with goblin mischief and the joy of revelry, and the curved lips might have been those of some wickedly-laughing faun; one almost expected to see embryo horns fretting the smoothness of his sleek dark hair...in all aspects he was damned...The droll lightheartedness which won Comus Bassington such a measure of popularity as he enjoyed among his fellows did not materially help to endear him to the succession of masters with whom he came in contact during the course of his schooldays...The more enlightened and experienced of them realized that he was something outside the scope of the things that they were called upon to deal with. A man who has been trained to cope with storms, to foresee their coming, and to minimize their consequences, may be pardoned if he feels a certain reluctance to measure himself against a tornado

[Faith B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whenever someone gets together a huge bookful of short stories I always get tired and a little bored in the middle. This happened here, but there were novels and plays in the back and so I just skipped to those. But I did make it all the way to "Toys" before skipping out. ;)
However, the short stories were very funny and/or disturbing, as the case may be and I enjoyed them. But after about 100 one gets tired of them.
Now for the novels.
The Unbearable Bassington needed another chapter to tie up Elaine ... as it is I just assume she had a life of unhappiness, which is probly what he wanted to do. :( The final chapter was rather brilliant, I just didn't want it to end there.
I did like When William Came, but I did not like The Westminster Alice. Maybe I am too picky?
His tragic plays were a little too melodramatic, but I think that that is what he was going for. But The Watched Pot was brilliant and made me giggle. :)

[Christiane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never heard of Saki until I was in college, in London on a study abroad and we saw a play based on his short stories. I laughed so hard I almost peeded my pants (it didn't help that we'd stopped at a pub first).

Saki wrote witty little stories about Edwardian society that sometimes, in "Sredni Vashtar" for example, turn quite satisfyingly horrible.
Saki did not have a particularly happy life. He was raised by strict aunts (who get what they deserve in his stories), was (most likely) homosexual at a time when it was still illegal in Britian, and though 43 years old when WWI began, enlisted and later died in the trenches of France. His last words (supposedly) were "Put that damned cigarette out!"

[T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the book bogged down in the middle, with some less than interesting short stories, the later stories were very amusing with enough twists to keep them from being predictable. The man had so much fun with the names of his characters and presented no end of ridiculous scenarios. Great light reading, when a short story is all your attention can manage.

[Vladivostok · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conniving countesses croqueting in tea gardens. Fox hunting in South Staffordshire with men of vague Teutonic complexion. Missing aunts, lugubrious uncles, and beasts of a great variety. 944 pages of luxurious Edwardian prose.

[Christopher DuBois · Rating 5 out of 5]

Snarky, witty, and brilliant. I can see why Saki is considered by many as the Oscar Wilde of his time. The only thing that disappointed me was that it took so long for me to discover this fellow.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here between February and October 2001.

Reginald

Monro's first collection of short stories is itself extremely short; twenty or so in under forty pages in this edition. Most of them are not really stories, but little anecdotes, providing context for a witty remark from effete, advanced and cynical Reginald. These include what is probably Saki's most famous phrase: "She was a good cook, as cooks go, and as cooks go, she went."

The purpose of these vignettes is to satirise society. This is done as much through the character of Reginald as it is through what he says and does. He is a product of high society, and yet something of an outsider in that he does not take it seriously. Oscar Wilde and Noël Coward are the kind of figures that Reginald brings to mind; Wilde was clearly an influence on Saki, and Coward, who wrote the introduction to this collected edition of his work, was an admirer.

Reginald in Russia

Saki's second collection of short stories did not appear until six years after the first, and there are significant changes. Reginald was a monothematic collection of extremely short commentaries on the British upper class social scene centred around the ascerbic, effete young man Reginald. Here, he features in only one story, providing the title for the collection, and it is half hearted in comparison with the earlier Reginald stories.

One of the strands in Saki's story telling is to write about something unpleasant behind a facade of apparently normal British life, usually something on the very of the supernatural; Sredni Vashtar in Beasts and Superbeasts is the most famous example. They are from a genre which today includes writers such as Robert Holdstock, and many of them are quite disturbing to read. The earliest of them, Gabriel-Ernest appears in this collection, incongrous alongside the society satire.

The Unbearable Bassington

At the beginning of Monro's first novel, the reader assumes that what they are reading is going to be exactly like his Reginald stories, but on a larger scale. Comus Bassington is another of the upper class young men with a cynical outlook on life. The plot is basically that his mother keeps trying to arrange things for Comus - the opportunity for a job as a secretary, or an advantageous marriage, for the Bassington fmaily is not so well off as they appear - only for Comus to spoil things by selfishness or an unwillingness to be guided by another.

The first thing which makes The Unbearable Bassington different is that Comus is not the sardonic observer that Reginald is. There is plenty of dissection of the foolishness of high society, but Comus is not the dissector. He is not sufficiently interested in the world outside himself to comment on it.

What makes The Unbearable Bassington more than social satire is the quite extraordinary power of the ending, which is extremely effective. Saki is famous for his satire; he has a marvellous if sometimes nasty imagination; but here he shows a literary merit quite different from those normally associated with him. The Unbearable Bassington is one of the peaks of his writing.

The Watched Pot

In this "complete works" of Saki, there are three items listed as plays. Two of them are really only sketches, about five pages each, which would fit into the collections of short stories quite well. (There are a couple of short stories which are actually in play format already.) The Watched Pot is different, a collaboration of considerable length with Charles Maude.

In the play, the largely offstage character Hortensia Bavvel wields an absolute tyrrany not just over her household but over everyone with whom she comes into contact, trying to mould a resentful and ungrateful world to be the way she thinks it ought to be. When her son marries, however, her power will come to an end, and because of the damage she is unwittingly doing to the prospects of the Party at the next election, many people have turned into matchmakers. Trevor shows no preference for any of the young women to whom he is introduced, and exen exhibits a tendency to fall asleep whenever left alone with one.

According to the introductory note, Maude said that the basic dialogue was his responsibility, while Monro provided the wit; Maude's major problem was to keep the witty remarks sparse enough that they didn't swamp the whole story. The Watched Pot is very funny, and contains some memorable examples of Saki's humour; Maude's input ensures that it is not as stilted and undramatic as the short plays by Saki alone.

The Chronicles of Clovis

Saki's third collection of short stories continues the trend toward the macabre shown in Reginald in Russia and The Unbearable Bassington. Many of them feature a new hero, Clovis Sangrail, who is a similar disenchanted upper class youth to but has a more malicious streak than either Reginald or Comus.

There are a fair number of stories in the collection, however, which do not involve Clovis. These tend to be the more supernatural, including The Music on the Hill, which is a further development of the idea of Gabriel-Ernest from Reginald in Russia of the savage demigod in the English countryside. Bringing this theme into a more domestic setting is one of Saki's most famous and most memorable stories, Shredni Vashtar, with its depiction of the childhood imagination as chilling as The Lord of the Flies.

The Chronicles of Clovis and Beasts and Superbeasts are Saki's most consistently excellent collections. The stories here are marred in one or two places by the fact that witty remarks are repeated, but that it a minor blemish.

When William Came

In 1914, Monro felt that appeasement was the wrong way to deal with Germany; he wanted to sound a warning that if the British did not prepare for war, the consequence would be subjugation. This novel is the consequence, propaganda swiftly overtaken by events; he wanted to portray a Britain which had lost a war and been annexed by Germany to shock public opinion towards war preparation.

From the perspective of those who lived after that war when it cane, who know how horrific it was, to have tried to bring it about seems quite an immoral act - though of course Monro felt he was doing his duty. There are certainly parts of the novel which now seem obscene, in the light of later twentieth century events (one of the results of the German victory which is deplored is a massive influx of German Jews into British society). As the war virtually destroyed the gentlemanly way of life which is the essence of Saki's writing, it may well be the case that had Monro survived the war - he enlisted in 1914 and was killed in France in 1916 - he might have preferred the occupation he depicted. Indeed, from a late twentieth century perspective, one really striking thing about the novel is the naivéte of the "horrors" of the occupation comparted with, say, the treatment of the Poles by Nazi Germany.

Some of the predictions are interesting, given the aftermath of the war. One particularly ironic comment is the reasoning given by German newspapers campaigning for the annexation of a defeated Britain: "They pointed out that Britain, defeated and humiliated, but with enormous powers of recuperation, would be a dangerous and inevitable enemy for the Germany of tomorrow..." This is a pretty good description of the situation in postwar Germany which was so important in the rise of the Nazis to power.

Because of the purpose for which it is written, When William Came is the least amusing of Saki's fiction; it would certainly be forgotten today were it not for his other stories. It is in parts interesting, but perhaps it would be better if it had been forgotten.

Beasts and Superbeasts

The best known collection of Monro's short stories is also a bit uneven. Most are fine, but one or two feel as though he were just going through the motions. The savagery of Sredni Vashtar is missing, but the best stories here (The Story-Teller and The Lumber Room) are also about child psychology and adult incomprehension of childhood. It is probably the attention-grabbing, Nietszchian title which has ensured the survival of this collection, though it would at least serve as a good introduction to Saki's writing.

The Toys of Peace

The first of two collections of Saki stories published after his death in the First World War, stories originally printed beforehand, was given a bitter title, an indication of how remote the world chronicled by Monro seemed even ten years later. (The other, The Square Egg, contgains stories written during the War.)

As far as the stories themselves are concerned, they are generally poorer in quality than those collected in Monro's lifetime. The edge is missing, particularly in the eerie supernatural themes which run through much of the fiction. On the other hand, there are some excellent stories here, and both the merciless dissection of the stupidities of society and the evocation of the savagery that children sometimes have is present.

Standout stories include Morleva, about a doll, and Shock Tactics, about a young man whose mother still reads his letters, severely cramping his social life.

The Square Egg

The second collection of Saki's writing published in the decade after his death is very short; it contains just five or six pieces. The majority are more journalism than storytelling, on subjects such as the way that the Western Front affected the behaviour of birds or on British politics. The pieces about the front - the one just mentioned and The Square Egg itself, about a con man preying on soldiers just behind the lines - are most memorable, but the collection is generally not as interesting as Saki's others. This is because the writing has dated more rapidly, as it requires knowledge of events now obscure, a fault shared with his other brief political satire, Alice in Westminster.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a truly excellent book. It was a bit slow to start with, but once you get accustomed to the style of Saki, it becomes addictive. I liked the short stories greatly, but I liked the novels even more. The wit is subtle and sharp. The humour is dry and understated, very much how I like my humour to be.

In the short stories, I preferred Clovis to Reginald. Somehow, his scrapes seemed to be more interesting and his escapes just a bit more imaginative. Both characters represent a strand of life that didn't make it past the Somme, much as the author didn't make it past the Somme. There is s certain irony that the short stories capture an age, and that many of the characters shared the same eventual fate as the author. They provide an interesting insight into the life of Edwardian rentier Britain.

Of the novels, I didn't like Westminster Alice, mainly because I didn't have a close acquaintance to the politicians portrayed. I think that it is an interesting idea, but one that does not age at all well. I liked both The Unbearable Bassington and When William Came. If truth is told, I bought the book just for When William Came. Neither of these novels disappoints. The twists and turns of both keep the reader alert, which I enjoyed greatly.

When William Came has a fantastic ending. It also questions the notion of British resistance to a foreign invader. Munro was sceptical, and I have to say that I share his scepticism. The resistance was a display of distaste and disdain, but nothing more significant than that. It's almost as if you believe that you can expel a foreign invader by forming a committee and passing a resolution. All very defiant, but also ineffective.

The Unbearable Bassington is a surprise package. I really liked the story. I imagine that it was written to provide a morality tale about dissolution. Bassington is born with a great number of advantages of the upper middle class and squanders them all. He is sent off to the colonies and all he can manage to do is to die. In the meantime, his ambitious mother has placed all of her faith on a forged picture. Although we are not told, we can envisage her decline to parallel that of her son. Such is the trajectory of dissipation.

I very much enjoyed this book. It is a long read, so I gave it several months to get through on an intermittent basis. The stories are cleverly crafted and you can chart the development of the writer at his trade. The plot is written with a good flow and the narrative is closely observed. All in all, this book is a joy to read.

[Peter Holz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most short story collections, this one is patchy. I could cheerfully skip the initial batch of tales about Reginald. In fact I almost put the book down at this point but things picked up dramatically after that. Some of the stories seem ahead of their time, while others appear fairly predictable but that may be because others have plagiarized the ideas since they were written. A common theme seems to revolve around a particularly annoying person receiving their comeuppance. The collection is over six hundred pages long and, as most of the stories run to no more than six pages each, is best enjoyed in small bites.