Editing Saki (section)

===Writing career===

In 1896 he decided to move to London to make a living as a writer.

Munro started his writing career as a journalist for newspapers such as ''[[The Westminster Gazette]]'', the ''[[Daily Express]]'', ''[[The Morning Post]]'', and magazines such as the ''[[Bystander (magazine)|Bystander]]'' and ''Outlook''. His first book, ''The Rise of the Russian Empire'', a historical study modelled upon [[Edward Gibbon]]'s ''[[The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]]'', appeared in 1900, under his real name, but proved to be something of a false start.

While writing ''The Rise of the Russian Empire'', he made his first foray into short story writing and published a piece called "Dogged" in ''St Paul's'' on February 18, 1899. (Munro's sketch "The Achievement of the Cat" appeared the day before in ''The Westminster Budget''.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Westminster Budget from London . . . Page 17 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/34442816/ |website=newspapers.com |date=17 February 1899 |publisher=Ancestry |access-date=9 July 2022}}</ref>) He then moved into the world of political satire in 1900 with a collaboration with [[Francis Carruthers Gould]] entitled "Alice in Westminster". Gould produced the sketches, and Munro wrote the text accompanying them, using the pen name "Saki" for the first time. The series lampooned political figures of the day (''Alice in Downing Street'' begins with the memorable line, "'Have you ever seen an Ineptitude?'" – referring to a zoomorphised [[Arthur Balfour]]<ref>{{Cite book |last=Munro |first=Hector H. ("Saki") |year=1902 |title=The Westminster Alice |title-link=The Westminster Alice |others=Illustrations: F. Carruthers Gould |location=London |publisher=Westminster Gazette |oclc=562982174}}</ref>), and was published in the Liberal ''Westminster Gazette''.

In 1902 he moved to ''The Morning Post'', described as one of the "organs of intransigence" by [[Stephen Koss]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Koss |first=Stephen |year=1984 |title=The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain |volume=Two: ''The Twentieth Century'' |location=London |publisher=Hamish Hamilton |page=80}}</ref> to work as a foreign correspondent, first in the Balkans, and then in Russia, where he was witness to the [[1905 Russian Revolution|1905 revolution]] in St. Petersburg. He then went on to Paris, before returning to London in 1908, where "the agreeable life of a man of letters with a brilliant reputation awaited him".<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Munro |first1=H. H. ("Saki") |last2=Reynolds |first2=Rothay |year=1919 |chapter=A Memoir of H. H. Munro |title=The Toys of Peace |location=London |publisher=John Lane Co. |pages=xiv}}</ref> In the intervening period ''Reginald'' had been published in 1904, the stories having first appeared in ''The Westminster Gazette'', and all this time he was writing sketches for ''The Morning Post'', the ''Bystander'' and ''The Westminster Gazette''. He kept a place in Mortimer Street, wrote, played bridge at the Cocoa Tree Club, and lived simply. ''Reginald in Russia'' appeared in 1910, ''[[The Chronicles of Clovis]]'' was published in 1911, and ''Beasts and Super-Beasts'' in 1914, along with other short stories that appeared in newspapers not published in collections in his lifetime.

He also produced two novels, ''The Unbearable Bassington'' (1912) and ''When William Came'' (1913).