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.