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Forthcoming: ‘Saki (H.H. Munro): Original and Uncollected Stories’

Saki (H.H. Munro): Original and Uncollected Stories CoverI’m delighted to announce that my edited collection of Saki’s stories will be appearing soon as a real book and in a number of electronic formats, thanks to Open Book Publishers.

The book is a follow up to my article on the genesis of The Chronicles of Clovis and contains the original periodical versions of the following stories:

  1. Esmé
  2. Tobermory
  3. Mrs Packletide’s Tiger
  4. The Background
  5. The Jesting of Arlington Stringham
  6. Adrian
  7. The Chaplet
  8. Wratislav
  9. Filboid Studge
  10. Ministers of Grace

It also includes three hitherto uncollected stories:

  1. Mrs Pendercoet’s Lost Identity
  2. The Optimist
  3. The Romance of Business (only recently rediscovered, as revealed on this blog)

I’ve written an introduction, setting the stories in context, and as you’d expect there are plentiful annotations as well. The volume also includes a chronology of Munro’s life, suggestions for further reading, and a list of textual variants for the Chronicles of Clovis stories.

At the minute I’m correcting the proofs, and once that’s done publication shouldn’t be too far away. I will of course post the publication date here as soon as I know it.

More details can be found here: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0365

Quote

Roald Dahl on Saki

“In all literature, he was the first to employ successfully a wildly outrageous premise in order to make a serious point. I love that. And today the best of his stories are still better than the best of just about every other writer around.”
― Roald Dahl on Saki,
original source unknown (can anyone help?)

‘Kaki’ [sic] writes…

The “Here, There and Everywhere” column of the Westminster Gazette of 12th June 1902 contained what I suppose you could call a rebuttal to ‘Reginald’s Peace Poem’, specifically the assertion by Reginald:

“What is the tragedy of the aasvogel?” asked the Other sympathetically.
“Oh, simply that there’s no rhyme for it.”

In response, the anonymous writer offers his readers the following:

A sweet-potato bogle,
You will please to understand,
Determined for to maffick
Since the peace had come to hand,
Bestowed a high-class ogle
On a petulant aasvogel
In the middle of the traffic
In the Rand.

KAKI

Source: Westminster Gazette, 12.06.1902, p. 10.

“Some confusion having arisen…”

“Some confusion having arisen owing to the similarity of names, Mr. Hector H. Munro (who usually writes under the pen-name of ‘Saki’) asks us to state that he is not the author of the novel ‘Mrs. Elmsley,’ by Mr. Hector Munro, published by Messrs. Constable and Co.”
― ‘Notice in the Westminster Gazette, Monday 3 April 1911, p. 4.’