The Open Window (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Saki, whose real name was Hector Hugh Munro, was born at the height of English Imperialism in Akyab, Burma, on December 18, 1870, to British parents, Charles Augustus and Mary Frances Munro. His father was a colonel in the British military. Following the death of his mother, he was sent back to Devon, England, where he lived with his grandmother and aunts. In 1887, his father returned to England after retiring and subsequently traveled throughout Europe with his children. Saki returned briefly to Burma in 1893 as a police functionary but returned to England due to his poor health. He turned to writing and became a foreign correspondent, traveling in Eastern Europe and France, from 1902 to 1909, writing for The Morning Post. With illustrator Francis Carruthers Gould, Saki collaborated on a successful series of political cartoons. His unusual pseudonym comes from the name of a character in Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat, a long poem by twelfth-century Persian writer Omar Khayyam.

Saki is most widely known as a satirist of the English ruling classes, and his best known short story is “The Open Window.” He is also famous for the character Reginald, who appears in a number of his short stories. However, though he is primarily known for his short fiction, including the volumes Reginald (1904), Reginald in Russia (1910) and Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914), he was also a novelist and playwright and the author of two works of nonfiction, including the historical The Rise of the Russian Empire. When World War I began, Saki joined the British military as an enlisted man, though due to his high social rank and education, he could have enlisted as an officer or worked for military intelligence. Indeed, he refused several offers of commission. He died in action in France on November 14, 1916.