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, whose witty and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture.

Saki is considered a master of the short story and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. His stories are always short but memorable, with delicately drawn characters and finely judged narratives. His story "The Open Window" may be his most famous, with a closing line ("Romance at short notice was her speciality") that has entered the lexicon of many writers. He also wrote several novels and plays.

The name i, a poem mentioned disparagingly by a character in "Reginald on Christmas Presents" (see quote below). It may, however, be a reference to the South American monkey of the same name, "a small, long-tailed monkey from the Western Hemisphere" that is a central character in "The Remoulding of Groby Lington" and that, like Munro himself, hid a vicious streak beneath a gentle exterior. This story is the only one of Saki's to begin with a quotation: "A man is known by the company he keeps", and plays on the idea of humans becoming like the pets they keep.

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H.H. Munro was born in Akyab, Burma (now known as the Union of Myanmar), the son of Charles Augustus Munro, an inspector-general for the Burma police when that country was still part of the British Empire. His mother, the former Mary Frances Mercer, died in 1872, killed by a runaway cow that may have influenced the sometimes deadly animals of his later stories. He was brought up in England with his brother and sister by his grandmother and aunts in a straitlaced household whose comic side he appreciated only later in life. He used the severity of this household in many stories, notably "Sredni Vashtar", in which a young boy keeps a pet polecat without the knowledge of his spiteful and domineering female guardian, who, to the boy's great satisfaction, is eventually killed by the polecat.

Munro was educated at Pencarwick School in Exmouth and the Bedford Grammar School. In 1893 he joined the Burma police. Three years later, failing health forced his resignation and return to England, where he started his career as a journalist, writing for newspapers such as the i in the Balkans, Russia, and Paris, then settled in London. Many of the stories from this period feature the elegant and effete Reginald and Clovis, who take heartless and cruel delight in the discomfort or downfall of their conventional and pretentious elders. In 1914 his novel i was published, in which he portrayed what might happen if the German emperor conquered England.

At the start of World War I, although officially over age, Munro joined the Army as an ordinary soldier, refusing a commission. He returned to the battlefield more than once when officially still too sick or injured to fight. He was killed in France, near Beaumont-Hamel, in 1916. Munro was sheltering in a shell crater when he was killed by a German sniper. His last words, according to several sources, were "Put that damned cigarette out!". After his death his sister Ethel destroyed most of his papers and wrote her own account of their childhood.

Much of Saki's work was published posthumously.

Some believe that Munro made misogynist and anti-Semitic comments, although compared with his contemporaries in Edwardian England, he appears progressive for his time.

Rather than the blanket term 'misogyny', it might be more correct to say that Munro disapproved of childless women, probably from his own negative experience with them. A sickly motherless child, Munro was raised by straitlaced female relatives who, he believed, went beyond strictness into cruelty and spite. (Mrs. De Ropp, the guardian cousin in "Sredni Vashtar", is said to be a representation of his view of his own aunt. See also the quotation "Eleanor hated boys" from "Arlington Stringham" below.) He was also irritated by some aspects of female psychology, as described in "The Sex that Does Not Shop". As a reputed homosexual, he attracted many female friends but never married.

Despite his lampooning of suffragettes and aunts, his stories feature sympathetic portrayals of admirably cool and self-possessed schoolgirls. One of his closest childhood friends was his sister, and they remained close until his death.

Saki's world contrasts the effete conventions and hypocrisies of Edwardian England with the ruthless but straightforward life-and-death struggles of nature. Nature generally wins in the end.

Saki's work is now in the public domain, and all or most of these stories are on the Internet.

Two feuding men trapped together by a falling tree in a forest settle their feud on realizing its absurdity and vow eternal friendship before greeting some unexpected visitors.At a train station, an arrogant and overbearing woman mistakes the mischievous Lady Carlotta for the governess she expected. Lady Carlotta, deciding not to correct the mistake, presents herself as a proponent of "the Schartz-Metterklume method" of making children understand history by acting it out themselves, and chooses a rather unsuitable historical episode for her first lesson.Vera, a self-possessed young lady, takes it upon herself to entertain Mr. Nuttel, a nervous newcomer to the countryside, by letting her imagination run wild.Rather than giving their young boys toy soldiers and guns, a couple decides to give their sons "peace toys". When the packages are opened, young Bertie shouts "It's a fort!" and is disappointed when his father replies "It's a municipal dust-bin". The boys are initially baffled as to how to obtain any enjoyment from models of a school of art and a public library, or from little toy figures of John Stuart Mill, poetess Felicia Hemans, and astronomer Sir John Herschel. Youthful inventiveness finds a way, however.A bachelor is irritated by noisy children in a railway ("the smaller girl created a diversion by beginning to recite 'On the Road to Mandalay'. She only knew the first line, but she put her limited knowledge to the fullest possible use"). He decides to tell them a story about a little girl named Bertha and keeps them quiet for the remainder of the journey to his own satisfaction, though that of the aunt who is accompanying them.Saki's recurring hero Clovis Sangrail, a sly young man, overhears the complacent middle-aged Huddle complaining of his own addiction to routine and aversion to change. Huddle's friend makes the wry suggestion of the need for an "unrest-cure" (the opposite of a rest-cure) to be performed, if possible, in the home. Clovis takes it upon himself to "help" the man and his sister by involving them in an invented outrage that will be a "blot on the twentieth century".

"I don't suppose," mused Clovis, as an early train bore him townwards, "that they will be in the least grateful for the Unrest-cure."

In a hunting story with a difference, the Baroness tells Clovis of a hyena she and her friend Constance encountered alone in the countryside, who takes a liking to them but cannot resist the urge to stop for a snack. The story is a perfect example of Saki's delight in setting societal convention against uncompromising nature. dlThe wailing accompaniment was explained. The gypsy child was firmly, and I expect painfully, held in his jaws.Constance shuddered. "Do you think the poor little thing suffered much?" came another of her futile questions."The indications were all that way,' I said; 'on the other hand, of course, it may have been crying from sheer temper. Children sometimes do."As a crowning dissipation, they all sat down to play progressive halma, with milk-chocolate for prizes. I've been carefully brought up, and I don't like to play games of skill for milk-chocolate, so I invented a headache and retired from the scene. I had been preceded a few minutes earlier by Miss Langshan-Smith, a rather formidable lady, who always got up at some uncomfortable hour in the morning, and gave you the impression that she had been in communication with most of the European Governments before breakfast. There was a paper pinned on her door with a signed request that she might be called particularly early in the morning. Such an opportunity does not come twice in a lifetime. I covered up everything except the signature with another notice, to the effect that before these words should meet the eye she should have ended a misspent life, was sorry for the trouble she was giving, and would like a military funeral. A few minutes later I violently exploded an air-filled paper bag on the landing, and gave a stage moan that could have been heard in the cellars. Then I pursued my original intention and went to bed. The noise those people made in forcing open the good lady's door was positively indecorous; she resisted gallantly, but I believe they searched her for bullets for about a quarter of an hour, as if she had been a historic battlefield.Eleanor hated boys, and she would have liked to have whipped this one long and often. It was perhaps the yearning of a woman who had no children of her own.You are not on the Road to Hell,' You tell me with fanatic glee: Vain boaster, what shall that avail If Hell is on the road to thee?Even friends of one's own set, who might be expected to know better, have curious delusions on the subject [of gift-giving]. I am NOT collecting copies of the cheaper editions of Omar Khayyam. I gave the last four that I received to the lift-boy, and I like to think of him reading them, with FitzGerald's notes, to his aged mother.