Graphic. Punctuation
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Biographies
Saki Pseudonym of Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916), short-story writer and novelist. He was born in Akyab, the son of an officer in the Burma police, and brought up by two maiden aunts in Devon. After being educated at a school in Exmouth and at Bedford grammar school, he followed his father into the Burma police but was invalided home. In 1896 he settled in London, contributing political satires to The Westminster Gazette (collected in The Westminster Alice, 1902). Between 1902 and 1908 he acted as correspondent for The Morning Post in Poland, Russia and Paris.His first book, The Rise of the Russian Empire (1899), was the only one written in a serious vein. Thereafter he adopted the pseudonym ‘Saki’ (the name of the cup-bearer in the last stanza of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam) for his collections of short stories: Reginald (1904). Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches (1910). The Chronicles of Clovis (1912) and Beasts and Superbeasts (1914). Whimsical in their plots and light-heartedly cynical in their lone, these stor¬ies arc also given a darker side by Munro’s memories of his unhappy childhood with his aunts. He also published two novels. The Unbearable Bassingon (1912) and When William Came (1913), the latter a satirical fantasy sub¬titled ‘A Story of London under the Hohenzollerns’.
Munro served with the Royal Fusiliers in World War I and was killed on the Western Front in 1910. Two collections of stories and sketches appeared posthumously, The Toys of Pence and Other Papers (1919) and The Square Egg and Other Sketches (1924).
