The Toys of Peace is a collection of 33 of his stories, including the title work, in which well meaning parents decide to give their sons toys that aren't war toys. The dissapointed boys find ways of indulging bloodthirsty instincts. Saki was the pen name of British author Hector Hugh Munro. He was a master of the short story, compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. His work is widely anthologized, and "Sredni Vashtar" was adapted for television by the old Twilight Zone series.

Author Biography

Hector Hugh Munro (1870 - 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, Noel 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.