Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. He is considered a master of the short story, and often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, he himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and P. G. Wodehouse. Besides his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was customary at the time, and then collected into several volumes), he wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire (the only book published under his own name); a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland); and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, a fantasy about a future German invasion and occupation of Britain. "The Unrest-Cure" - Saki's recurring hero Clovis Sangrail, a clever, mischievous 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 that he needs 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". Famous works of the author Saki: "The Interlopers", "Gabriel-Ernest", "The Schartz-Metterklume Method", "The Toys of Peace", "The Storyteller", "The Open Window", "The Unrest-Cure", "Esmé", "Sredni Vashtar", "Tobermory", "The Bull", "The East Wing".

An NYRB Classics Original The whimsical, macabre tales of British writer H. H. Munro—better known as Saki—skewer the banality and hypocrisy of polite English society between the end of the Victorian era and the beginning of World War I. Saki’s heroes are enfants terribles who marshal their considerable wit and imagination against the cruelty and fatuousness of a decorous and doomed world. Here, Saki’s brilliantly polished dark gems are paired with illustrations by the peerless Edward Gorey, available for the first time in an English-language edition. The fragile elegance and creeping menace of Gorey’s pen-and-ink drawings perfectly complements Saki’s population of delicate ladies, mischief-making charges, spectral guests, sardonic house pets, flustered authority figures, and delightfully preposterous imposters.

Born in Burma in 1870, Scottish writer H. H. Munro adopted the pseudonym Saki to satirize the social conventions, cruelty, and foolishness of the Edwardian era. His highly readable blend of flippant humor and outrageous inventiveness is often overlaid with a mood of horror. After Munro's untimely death in action during World War I, Christopher Morley wrote: "the empty glass we turn down for him is the fragile, hollow-stemmed goblet meant for the finest champagne; it is of the driest." Readers can sample Munro's special brand of well-plotted satiric fiction in this inexpensive collection of his best tales. In addition to the title story, selections include "Tobermory," "Laura," "The Open Window," and "The Schartz-Metterklume Method." With its biting wit and vein of cruelty, Munro's work has sometimes been compared to early Evelyn Waugh; admirers of Waugh and other discerning readers are sure to savor this stimulating taste of vintage Saki.

Girlfriends, Ghosts, and Other Stories brings together eighty-one brief texts spanning Robert Walser’s career, from pieces conceived amid his early triumphs to later works written at a psychiatric clinic in Bern. Many were published in the feuilleton sections of newspapers during Walser’s life; others were jotted down on slips of paper and all but forgotten. They are strung together like consciousness, idiosyncratic and vulnerable, genuine in their irony, wistful in their humor. Some dwell on childish or transient topics—carousels, the latest hairstyles, an ekphrasis of the illustrations in a picture book—others on the grand themes of nature, art, and love. But they remain conversational, almost lighter than air. Every emotion ventured takes on the weight of a sincerity that is imperiled as soon as it comes into contact with the outside world, which retains all of the novelty it had in childhood—and all of the danger.

A Schoolboy’s Diary brings together more than seventy of Robert Walser’s strange and wonderful stories, most never before available in English. Opening with a sequence from Walser’s first book, “Fritz Kocher’s Essays,” the complete classroom assignments of a fictional boy who has met a tragically early death, this selection ranges from sketches of uncomprehending editors, overly passionate readers, and dreamy artists to tales of devilish adultery, sexual encounters on a train, and Walser’s service in World War I. Throughout, Walser’s careening, confounding, delicious voice holds the reader transfixed.

Saki: The Blind Spot and Other Stories of the Supernatural Hector Hugh Munro is perhaps the most graceful spokesman for England's ""golden afternoon"" - those slow and peaceful years prior to the outbreak of World War I. The good wit of bad manners, elegantly spiced with irony and deftly controlled malice, has made Saki stories small, perfect gems of the English language. The Blind Spot and Other Stories of the Supernatural contain all his short stories about the supernatural.

A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story provides a comprehensive treatment of short fiction writing and chronicles its development in Britain and Ireland from 1880 to the present. Provides a comprehensive treatment of the short story in Britain and Ireland as it developed over the period 1880 to the present Includes essays on topics and genres, as well as on individual texts and authors Comprises chapters on women’s writing, Irish fiction, gay and lesbian writing, and short fiction by immigrants to Britain