Saki

The Unbearable Bassington was written in 1912 by Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 - 14 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro. He was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, No l Coward and P. G. Wodehouse.

The Chronicles of Clovis written by Saki (the literary pseudonym of Hector Hugh Munro). In 1908, Saki gave up foreign reporting and settled in London. Many of his stories from this period feature Reginald and Clovis, young men-about-town who take mischievous delight in the discomfort or downfall of their conventional, pretentious elders.

In two brilliant collections of stories, Reginald (1904) and Reginald in Russia (1910), which spanned the Edwardian period, Saki made his name as the predominant wit of the emergent twentieth century. As the new Georgian age dawned, his star was at its height: .." Sylvia, notwithstanding her name, was accustomed to nothing much more sylvan than "leafy Kensington." She looked on the country as something excellent and wholesome in its way, which was apt to become troublesome if you encouraged it overmuch..."..". I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English..."..". You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed." In this volume, first published in 1911, he introduced a new titular character, albeit with a huge resemblance to both Reginald and himself. Clovis Sangrail is unsurprisable, louche in conversation, thoroughly determined to avoid the banal. In this magnificent collection, he observes the ludicrous with an unswerving eye, and undermines it with rapier-like skill, while gleefully and covertly turning all to his advantage. Saki had announced himself as the brief Edwardian flame burnt itself out; with the brilliance of this volume he made it plain that he had no intention of fading away.

With his career at its zenith, known universally for his three volumes of magnificently witty stories, Saki in 1912 was ready to branch out. He decided to apply his genius to a single long narrative in a novel. The Unbearable Bassington sports his famous raillery at its highest pitch: "...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.""... I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.""...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." This story introduces us to another of the author's louche young men, basking in the glow of society whilst also managing to undermine it stealthily. The handsome and infuriatingly nonchalant Comus Bassington and his mother Francesca are struggling along at the edges somewhat -- an advantageous marriage would certainly help. And Comus has met an heiress who appeals, Elaine de Frey. But he has a rival, his friend Courtenay Youghal, who is an up and coming young politician of great surface charm. Francesca is relying on Comus, and there's no accounting for what she might do if he doesn't come up trumps. It will not only be embarrassing to his and his mother's pride, it will also place a terrible strain on their resources. The tracing of not only the simmering and uproarious repartee, but also the implicit tragedy in the venal expectations of high society in The Unbearable Bassington introduced a new note in Saki's repertoire. Their combined power made for a book which was instantly celebrated as one of the great novels of its decade.

When William Came (1913) is a novel by Saki. Considered a masterpiece of invasion literature, When William Came indulges in the paranoid atmosphere of the leadup to the Great War to weave a sinister tale of espionage, survival, and conspiracy. Keenly aware of the heightening tensions between Britain and Germany, Saki crafts an entertaining story with a political purpose: to call for national conscription in the event of war. Much has changed in London since Murrey Yeovil left for a hunting trip in Eastern Siberia. War came and went, London fell to German forces, and his wife Cicely found a younger lover. Disembarking from the train, he gets into a cab and gives his address, only to discover his driver speaks German. Slowly, he grows accustomed to the rhythms of life under an occupying force, but it is impossible to ignore how many people have been lost. Of those who survived the war, many fled for the countryside or to colonies and nations overseas. They are the lucky ones, who need not fear a trip to the store or a turn down the wrong street might lead to imprisonment—or worse. Soon, Murrey must decide where his true loyalties lie. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Saki’s When William Came is a classic of British invasion literature reimagined for modern readers.

The Westminster Alice is a collection of humorous vignettes by Saki, first published in the Westminster Gazette in 1902, which form a political pastiche of the Alice books by Lewis Carroll, featuring an unforgettable cast of notable politicians of the day, and brought to life with illustrations by F. Carruthers Gould – 'with apologies to Sir John Tenniel' for their striking likeness to the original Alice illustrations. Desperately trying to navigate her way through the world of Ineptitudes, Knights, Queens and Mad Hatters, Alice delivers a stinging satire of Westminster politics – which, imbued with Saki's charm and delicate wit, and set in a world evocative of Carroll's timeless Wonderland, is as charming today as when it was written, and belongs on every Alice fan's bookshelf.

Leonard Bilsiter was one of those people who have failed to find this world attractive or interesting, and who have sought compensation in an "unseen world" of their own experience or imagination-or invention. Children do that sort of thing successfully, but children are content to convince themselves, and do not vulgarise their beliefs by trying to convince other people. Leonard Bilsiter's beliefs were for "the few," that is to say, anyone who would listen to him. His dabblings in the unseen might not have carried him beyond the customary platitudes of the drawing-room visionary if accident had not reinforced his stock-in-trade of mystical lore. In company with a friend, who was interested in a Ural mining concern, he had made a trip across Eastern Europe at a moment when the great Russian railway strike was developing from a threat to a reality; its outbreak caught him on the return journey, somewhere on the further side of Perm, and it was while waiting for a couple of days at a wayside station in a state of suspended locomotion that he made the acquaintance of a dealer in harness and metalware, who profitably whiled away the tedium of the long halt by initiating his English travelling companion in a fragmentary system of folk-lore that he had picked up from Trans-Baikal traders and natives. Leonard returned to his home circle garrulous about his Russian strike experiences, but oppressively reticent about certain dark mysteries, which he alluded to under the resounding title of Siberian Magic. The reticence wore off in a week or two under the influence of an entire lack of general curiosity, and Leonard began to make more detailed allusions to the enormous powers which this new esoteric force, to use his own description of it, conferred on the initiated few who knew how to wield it. His aunt, Cecilia Hoops, who loved sensation perhaps rather better than she loved the truth, gave him as clamorous an advertisement as anyone could wish for by retailing an account of how he had turned a vegetable marrow into a wood pigeon before her very eyes. As a manifestation of the possession of supernatural powers, the story was discounted in some quarters by the respect accorded to Mrs. Hoops' powers of imagination.

‘Tobermory’ – the title story of this collection – is widely considered one of Saki’s finest pieces, in which a short-sighted dinner-party guest introduces a talking cat to the diners, inadvertently revealing gossip and pushing fickle characters into the limelight – in the process undermining the common perceptions of grandiose and genteel high society. From some of his earliest successes, such as ‘Gabriel-Ernest’, ‘The Bag’ and the Clovis stories, about a young man with an impish sense of humour, to later tales such as ‘The Boar-Pig’, which is as bizarre as it is hilarious, and ‘The Toys of Peace’, which he was never able to see in print, this selection contains a wealth of well-known tales with vastly different themes – from reincarnation to psychological warfare – and bearing every trademark token of wit with which Saki has enthralled generations of eager readers.

"When peace comes," wrote an officer of the 22nd Royal Fusiliers, the regiment in which Munro was a private and in which he rose to the rank of lance-sergeant, "Saki will give us the most wonderful of all the books about the war." But that book of the war will not be written; for Munro has died for King and country. In this volume are his last tales. And it is because these tales, brilliant and elusive as butterflies, hide, rather than reveal, the character of the man who wrote them, give but a suggestion of his tenderness and simplicity, of his iron will, of his splendour in the grip of war, that it is my duty to write these pages about him, now that he lies in the kind earth of France. It is but to do what his choice of a pen-name makes me sure he himself would have done for a friend.

This anthology of anthologies contains H. H. Munro's excellent short stories, derived from a total of six compilations which were published over the course of twenty years. Containing all of his best regarded and famous short tales, as well as a sizeable host of hidden gems and lesser-known treasures, this gigantic compendium is comprehensive and certain to satisfy any fan of the author. The sensual, tantalising and distinctly moral nature of the stories usually rail against the stifling conventions of society - in the end, the natural world (and people acting naturally) tend to come out on top. The recognisable style with which Saki tells his tales make their endings, which are usually surprising and witty, a keynote feature of every story. Saki's ingrained wit and the casually biting nature of the topics he chooses often leads certain characters and the things they represent to ridicule, usually to the great satisfaction of the reader.