For our second BRASS Stacks, we are featuring one of the greatest short story writers of the pre-War years, H.H. Munro, who wrote as Saki.

This brilliant journalist-turned-short story writer was one of the great wits of the Edwardian age. Orphaned at age 2, Munro was raised by his grandmother and a household of puritanical aunts. (In both his comic pieces and his horror stories, aunts often end up being the victims.) His brilliant young wastrels like Reginald and Clovis inspired P.G. Wodehouse, and his stories of supernatural and natural horror place him squarely in the tradition of great British ghost writers like E.F. Benson and M.R. James. This story, Tobermory, is one of his best, and deftly combines both drawing room comedy and the fantastical to tell the story of the world’s first talking cat.