The Short Stories Of Saki

By Hector Munro Saki

The short story is often viewed as an inferior relation to the Novel. But it is an art in itself. To take a story and distil its essence into fewer pages while keeping character and plot rounded and driven is not an easy task. Many try and many fail. In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers. Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say. In this volume we examine some of the short stories of Saki. Hector Hugh Munro was born in Akyab Burma on the 18th December 1870. With the death of his mother, Hector was sent to England to live with his Grandmother and Aunts and endured a strict family upbringing. Educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth, Devon and at Bedford School it was only on a few occasions that he was able to travel with his father to fashionable European spas and tourist resorts. In 1893, Hector followed his father into the Indian Imperial Police, where he was posted to Burma. Two years later, having contracted malaria, he resigned and returned to England. In England he started his career as a journalist, writing for the newspapers; the Westminster Gazette, Daily Express, Bystander, Morning Post, and Outlook. In 1900, Munro's first book, an historical study, appeared: The Rise of the Russian Empire. From 1902 to 1908, Munro worked as a foreign correspondent for The Morning Post in the Balkans, Warsaw, Russia and Paris; he then gave that up and settled in London. His postings gave him a large amount of inspiration for his ‘Reginald’ stories as well as his perhaps more famous stories of the macabre and unusual. His wit, general mischievousness and delight in turning things on their head brought him great acclaim. In November 1916, when sheltering in a shell crater near Beaumont-Hamel, France, he was killed by a German sniper. His alleged last words "Put that bloody cigarette out!". He was 45. Many of these stories are also available as an audiobook from our sister company Word Of Mouth. Many samples are at our youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/PortablePoetry?feature=mhee The full volume can be purchased from iTunes, Amazon and other digital stores. They are read for you by Bill Wallis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copyright Group
• Release date: Sep 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780005867

Book preview

The Short Stories Of Saki

The short story is often viewed as an inferior relation to the Novel.  But it is an art in itself.  To take a story and distil its essence into fewer pages while keeping character and plot rounded and driven is not an easy task.  Many try and many fail. 

In this series we look at short stories from many of our most accomplished writers.  Miniature masterpieces with a lot to say.  In this volume we examine some of the short stories of Saki.

Hector Hugh Munro was born in Akyab Burma on the 18th December 1870. 

With the death of his mother, Hector was sent to England to live with his Grandmother and Aunts and endured a strict family upbringing.

Educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth, Devon and at Bedford School it was only on a few occasions that he was able to travel with his father to fashionable European spas and tourist resorts. In 1893, Hector followed his father into the Indian Imperial Police, where he was posted to Burma. Two years later, having contracted malaria, he resigned and returned to England.

In England he started his career as a journalist, writing for the newspapers; the Westminster Gazette, Daily Express, Bystander, Morning Post, and Outlook.

In 1900, Munro's first book, an historical study, appeared: The Rise of the Russian Empire.

From 1902 to 1908, Munro worked as a foreign correspondent for The Morning Post in the Balkans, Warsaw, Russia and Paris; he then gave that up and settled in London.  His postings gave him a large amount of inspiration for his ‘Reginald’ stories as well as his perhaps more famous stories of the macabre and unusual. His wit, general mischievousness and delight in turning things on their head brought him great acclaim.  

In November 1916, when sheltering in a shell crater near Beaumont-Hamel, France, he was killed by a German sniper. His alleged last words Put that bloody cigarette out! He was 45.

Many of these stories are also available as an audiobook from our sister company Word Of Mouth and can be purchased from iTunes, Amazon and other digital stores.  They are read for you by Bill Wallis

Index Of Stories

The Music On The Hill

The Interlopers

The Cobweb

The Hounds Of Fate

The Phantom Luncheon

Shock Tactics

The Disappearance Of Crispin Umberleigh

Blood Feud Of Toad Water

The Story Teller

The Unrest Cure

The Open Window

Gabriel Ernest

Esme

Fate

The Music On The Hill

Sylvia Seltoun ate her breakfast in the morning-room at Yessney with a pleasant sense of ultimate victory, such as a fervent Ironside might have permitted himself on the morrow of Worcester fight. She was scarcely pugnacious by temperament, but belonged to that more successful class of fighters who are pugnacious by circumstance. Fate had willed that her life should be occupied with a series of small struggles, usually with the odds slightly against her, and usually she had just managed to come through winning. And now she felt that she had brought her hardest and certainly her most important struggle to a successful issue. To have married Mortimer Seltoun, Dead Mortimer as his more intimate enemies called him, in the teeth of the cold hostility of his family, and in spite of his unaffected indifference to women, was indeed an achievement that had needed some determination and adroitness to carry through; yesterday she had brought her victory to its concluding stage by wrenching her husband away from Town and its group of satellite watering-places and settling him down, in the vocabulary of her kind, in this remote wood-girt manor farm which was his country house.

You will never get Mortimer to go, his mother had said carpingly, but if he once goes he'll stay; Yessney throws almost as much a spell over him as Town does. One can understand what holds him to Town, but Yessney - and the dowager had shrugged her shoulders.

There was a sombre almost savage wildness about Yessney that was certainly not likely to appeal to town-bred tastes, and 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. Distrust of town-life had been a new thing with her, born of her marriage with Mortimer, and she had watched with satisfaction the gradual fading of what she called the Jermyn-street-look in his eyes as the woods and heather of Yessney had closed in on them yesternight. Her will-power and strategy had prevailed; Mortimer would stay.

Outside the morning-room windows was a triangular slope of turf, which the indulgent might call a lawn, and beyond its low hedge of neglected fuchsia bushes a steeper slope of heather and bracken dropped down into cavernous combes overgrown with oak and yew. In its wild open savagery there seemed a stealthy linking of the joy of life with the terror of unseen things. Sylvia smiled complacently as she gazed with a School-of-Art appreciation at the landscape, and then of a sudden she almost shuddered.

It is very wild, she said to Mortimer, who had joined her; one could almost think that in such a place the worship of Pan had never quite died out.

The worship of Pan never has died out, said Mortimer. Other newer gods have drawn aside his votaries from time to time, but he is the Nature-God to whom all must come back at last. He has been called the Father of all the Gods, but most of his children have been stillborn.

Sylvia was religious in an honest vaguely devotional kind of way, and did not like to hear her beliefs spoken of as mere aftergrowths, but it was at least something new and hopeful to hear Dead Mortimer speak with such energy and conviction on any subject.

You don't really believe in Pan? she asked incredulously.

I've been a fool in most things, said Mortimer quietly, but I'm not such a fool as not to believe in Pan when I'm down here. And if you're wise you won't disbelieve in him too boastfully while you're in his country.

It was not till a week later, when Sylvia had exhausted the attractions of the woodland walks round Yessney, that she ventured on a tour of inspection of the farm buildings. A farmyard suggested in her mind a scene of cheerful bustle, with churns and flails and smiling dairymaids, and teams of horses drinking knee- deep in duck-crowded ponds. As she wandered among the gaunt grey buildings of Yessney manor farm her first impression was one of crushing stillness and desolation, as though she had happened on some lone deserted homestead long given over to owls and cobwebs; then came a sense of furtive watchful hostility, the same shadow of unseen things that seemed to lurk in the wooded combes and coppices. From behind heavy doors and shuttered windows came the restless stamp of hoof or rasp of chain halter, and at times a muffled bellow from some stalled beast. From a distant corner a shaggy dog watched her with intent unfriendly eyes; as she drew near it slipped quietly into its kennel, and slipped out again as noiselessly when she had passed by. A few hens, questing for food under a rick, stole away under a gate at her approach. Sylvia felt that if she had come across any human beings in this wilderness of barn and byre they would have fled wraith-like from her gaze. At last, turning a corner quickly, she came upon a living thing that did not fly from her. Astretch in a pool of mud was an enormous sow, gigantic beyond the town-woman's wildest computation of swine-flesh, and speedily alert to resent and if necessary repel the unwonted intrusion. It was Sylvia's turn to make an unobtrusive retreat. As she threaded her way past rickyards and cowsheds and long blank walls, she started suddenly at a strange sound; the echo of a boy's laughter, golden and equivocal. Jan, the only boy employed on the farm, a towheaded, wizen-faced yokel, was

Reviews for The Short Stories Of Saki

[vivienner_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful acerbic humour that brings a surprise smile. Saki can be likened to a cross between Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde although that description might be just a shade flattering. Very enjoyable.

[tilda.tilds · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Hysterically funny with Saki's good old-fashioned dry English wit. A collection of stories with rarely a miss and most will make you laugh out loud if you share Hector Hugh Munro's sense of the ridiculous.

[julsitos2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The guy is on the same level as that of Chekov and Maugham. Almost all of his stories are full of morbid wit and sarcasm that all other Edwardian tales (think: The Little Princess) seem too stiff and wooden. His style is akin to that of aristocratic English authors, but never a difficult read like that of Dickens. Highly Highly recommended!!

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love Saki, and this book included some very funny tales that hadn't made it into the 'best of' collections that I have read in the past, as well as a few duds.

[liehtzu_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a really enjoyable collection of Victorian/Edwardian-era satire, the prose is wonderful and the humour bitingly apt for its time and culture. Think Oscar Wilde though not quite as adept. As window into a class system (as satirised by Wilde, by GBS -think Pygmalion, P.G. Wodehouse's – think Jeeves and Wooster) this is a witty eye-opener. There is something unfinished or under developed in some of the satires, as if the author got fed up half way through and having made his point couldn’t be bothered to polish it off; but don’t let that deter you. This will bring a wry smile to your lips – and what lovely English.

[figre · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In the introduction to this book is included the statement, “Saki’s short stories of urbane malice are like a fine dessert wine – they should be sipped, and savoured slowly; so intense are they that to read them at one sitting may induce a kind of literary dyspepsia.” I could not agree more. I approached this collection in such a fashion and cannot imagine trying to quickly read through this collection. Each story is a gem, and should be admired and reflected upon similar to the way one approaches gems – looked at from every side in order to fully appreciate the beauty; because these are beautiful pieces and each will have its own resonance and attraction.Saki’s wry commentaries about life and subtle twists to bring them to conclusion are each a crafted work of art. Sure, not all are masterpieces. But, even when not quite hitting the mark, there is still enjoyment in watching the craftsman at work. And just about the time you think you have a handle on Saki’s humor, along comes a chilling story about werewolves, or a ghost story, or a collection about the war that shakes you from the comfortable satire evident in other pieces. It is easy to try and pigeonhole Saki’s work, but this full collection will help anyone broaden their understanding. Nowhere is this more evident than in the novels. Neither is what one would expect from Saki. While the wryness is still evident, neither has the lightheartedness the short stories bring forward. The first (The Unbearable Bassington) tells the tragedy of the British stiff upper lip in regards to a wayward son, and the second (When Willam Came) was an alternate history where Germany had taken over England. I will always retain the image from one of the later chapters where a displaced Englishwoman watches the Union Jack raised in a far away land. At first, I almost lowered the rating of this book because of the inclusion of these pieces. (Saki’s writing becomes a bit much in the short novel format), yet the skill was still there, the stories were still moving, and they have both haunted me after the reading. Whether just now discovering Saki or already a fan, this is the ultimate book. Collections of complete works often have weak points (no one can always get it right), but the weak points in this one excels the best of most other authors’ works.

[grazianoronca_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

SREDNI VASHTAR and THE OPEN WINDOW Sredni Vashtar is a short story written between 1900 and 1914 by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro).This story is collected in this volume and also in an audiobook: Classic Chiiling Tales.A 10-year-old boy called Conradin lives with his guardian Mrs. De Ropp. Conradin’s is very hard because of his guardian, so he invents a new religion for himself. The idol of this religion is a palecat-ferret. Conradin named it Sredni Vashtar.‘Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.’: this is the Conradin’s prayer and the idol obeys to him.******************** *********************** ************************************The Open Window was collected with other short stories in 1914.A girl of fifteen tells to a visitor about her weird family.Girl: ‘Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her (= girl’s aunt) husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting.They never came back.’ (p.289)Girl: - Here they are at last (she cried)- In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window. … A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels.The ghost: - Who was that who bolted out as we came up?The aunt: - A most extraordinary man … and dashed off without a word of good-bye …One would think he had seen a ghost.The girl: - I expect it was the spaniel.He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere … by a pack of pariah dogs. (p.291)

[mouldywarp_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nearly every story a delight - highly recommended entertainment!

[bexaplex · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I started this collection thinking of Saki as a more transparently malicious version of P.G. Wodehouse; he eviscerates pompous society women in a few pen-strokes. The cruelty is always justified by character defect or wrong behavior on the part of the person being skewered, and the lively children (or perpetual-adolescents) — friends of animals — always prevail. I agree with one critic, quoted in the biography of Saki by E.M. Munro: "Munro's understanding of children can only be explained by the fact that he was in many ways a child himself: his sketches betray a harshness, a love of practical jokes, a craze for animals of the most exotic breeds, a lack of mellow geniality that hint very strongly at the child in the man. Manhood has but placed in his hands a perfect sense of irony and withheld all other adult traits."Some of the these stories are masterful. In a few sentences, Saki paints a few characters with precision and sets up a conflict into which the antagonist wanders, usually unaware, with hilarious results.How do I feel about the collection? The antagonists are often women (although girls are in a different category, apparently), and Saki skewers suffragettes, in particular, with regularity. It is certainly easier to find this humorous now that I can vote, although I admit those weren't my favorite stories. To me the autocratic aunts which haunt these stories and which are drawn from Munro's life seem sad, rather than powerful, making the casual cruelty toward them in bad taste. Am I imagining something that isn't there, or does the sadness come from Saki himself? In 'Excepting Mrs. Pentherby' Saki describes a communal country house where many couples reside for a season, sharing expenses. The house owner hires a woman to be annoying so that everybody's wives quarrel with her and there isn't a constantly shifting set of alliances. This is basically the plot of every reality show ever. At the end, the scheme is revealed to the owner's sister-in-law, who expresses one last burst of anger at the hired woman, but also at her brother-in-law, which Saki tries to deflect ("I think you are the most odious person in the whole world," said Reggie's sister-in-law. Which was not strictly true; more than anybody, more than ever she disliked Mrs. Pentherby. It was impossible to calculate how many quarrels that women had done her out of.) This is not a great, successful, story — the sister-in-law is not ridiculous enough to have deserved the prank, and the entire thing relies on one's supposed assumption that women (more than men) like to quarrel with each other. At the end I felt badly for the sister in law, which was obviously not the stated intention, although that emotion comes from the way that the sister-in-law is portrayed as mostly blameless.This is the first Saki that I've read, and It probably would have been smarter to start off with a smaller curated collection. But this large volume piqued my interest, and I believe those less-well-known stories gave me a better glimpse of the author.

[danielstj · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Complete and utter trite.

Avoid at all costs.