A Study Guide for Saki's "Gabriel-Ernest"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Saki's "Gabriel-Ernest", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Studentsfor all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: May 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781535846196

Book preview

18

Gabriel-Ernest

H. H. Munro

1909

Introduction

Gabriel-Ernest is a story by British Edwardian writer H. H. Munro, also known as Saki. It was published first in the Westminster Gazette in 1909 and then in Saki's short-story collection Reginald in Russia in 1910. It is available in a number of editions, including The Complete Saki (1998). It can also be found in Unnatural Creatures (2013), edited by Neil Gaiman. Gabriel-Ernest is a fantasy/supernatural story that features a werewolf who appears by day as a teenage boy and by night as a wolf. The werewolf appears one day in the woods on the country estate of an upper-class Englishman named Van Cheele. The interaction between the two is a mixture of humor and horror, narrated in the witty, elegant style that is to be expected from an English writer of that long-ago Edwardian era.

Author Biography

Hector Hugh Munro was born on December 18, 1870, in Akyab, British Burma. His mother died shortly after his birth, and his father, a major in the British army, took him to England in 1873, to be raised by the father's two sisters and his mother. His father would return on leave from his posting abroad from time to time to visit his son as well as Hector's elder brother and sister. In 1885 Munro was sent to Bedford School, Bedfordshire, a public school (the equivalent of a private school in the United States). In the late 1880s, Munro's father retired and took his family on two trips to Europe. In 1889 they remained in Davos, Switzerland, over the winter, returning in April 1890 to live in Heanton, Devonshire.

In 1893, Munro joined the Military Police in Burma, a position arranged for him by his father. He suffered from malaria, however, and had to return to England in 1894. He spent a year in Devon recuperating. In 1896 he moved to London, intent on earning his living by writing. His first book was a work of nonfiction, The Rise of the Russian Empire (1900). Then