Saki

[Vince]

I finished proofing Early Autumn, and was looking around this weekend. Since I did O. Henry and Maupassant, I felt like Saki would round out the triumvirate (his “Open Window” has always been one of my favorites). Our wanted page links to the several books at PG that are transcribed, but there are also a number of stories that are not contained in those books, so I believe we would do an omnibus. Here’s a spreadsheet that contains everything I’ve found (as with Maupassant, there is a great web site that contains almost all of this information).

The first question is about the Alice sketches. He wrote a number a political sketches in the style of Alice in Wonderland, complete with original-looking illustrations. These are not really short stories, and the illustrations should really be retained (they include contemporary characters he’s satirizing, in the style of Tenniel’s original illustrations). So we could include these, but they might work better as a standalone book. You can look at them here.

The second question is about the stories that don’t appear in the books. The spreadsheet shows the original publication information for them; most of them were in British newspapers in the early 1900’s. The British Newspaper Library has the newspapers, but it will take me subscribing for a month to get access to scans. The question is how that fits with our requirements; it should show their PD, and I can transcribe them, but it’s behind a firewall, so …? I have not been able to find scans for the newspapers anywhere else.

I’m not sure all of the stories will fit within the omnibus, either; some of them are essays he wrote while he was in WWI, some others are supposedly political in nature as well, but we won’t know more until we get the text. A few of them are available—six were included in a biography his sister wrote (but the scans would be needed to show they’re PD), seven were “rediscovered” a couple of years ago by someone who’s made the scans available online, and one is available in a book that’s on IA. The rest I would have to get from the BNL, at least those that are available.

[Alex Cabal]

On 8/14/23 12:15 AM, Vince wrote:
> The first question is about the Alice sketches. He wrote a number a
> political sketches in the style of Alice in Wonderland, complete with
> original-looking illustrations.

I don't know if these would fit in the collections policy. Political
cartoons are essentially nonfiction, and are fundamentally rooted in
their times. They aren't really timeless in the sense that long form
satirical fiction can be. The entire book is also super short, at barely
70 pages in print, many of which would have presumably been full-page
illustrations.

> The second question is about the stories that don’t appear in the books.
> The spreadsheet shows the original publication information for them;
> most of them were in British newspapers in the early 1900’s. The British
> Newspaper Library has the newspapers, but it will take me subscribing
> for a month to get access to scans. The question is how that fits with
> our requirements; it should show their PD, and I can transcribe them,
> but it’s behind a firewall, so …? I have not been able to find scans for
> the newspapers anywhere else.

I don't really know how that would work. From our perspective, PD is PD.
How the transcription comes into being before being handed over to SE
doesn't matter that much. But like PG, we would need some kind of proof
that the transcription comes from PD scans.

> I’m not sure all of the stories will fit within the omnibus, either;
> some of them are essays he wrote while he was in WWI, some others are
> supposedly political in nature as well, but we won’t know more until we
> get the text.

We can split it up into different ebooks by category, like "essays" or
"short fiction". But like above, nonfiction political commentary is
probably not within the collections policy.

[Vince]

On Aug 14, 2023, at 3:42 PM, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org> wrote:

On 8/14/23 12:15 AM, Vince wrote:

The first question is about the Alice sketches. He wrote a number a political sketches in the style of Alice in Wonderland, complete with original-looking illustrations.

I don't know if these would fit in the collections policy. Political cartoons are essentially nonfiction, and are fundamentally rooted in their times. They aren't really timeless in the sense that long form satirical fiction can be. The entire book is also super short, at barely 70 pages in print, many of which would have presumably been full-page illustrations.

Perfect, I wasn’t really interested in messing with those illustrations anyway. :)

The second question is about the stories that don’t appear in the books. The spreadsheet shows the original publication information for them; most of them were in British newspapers in the early 1900’s. The British Newspaper Library has the newspapers, but it will take me subscribing for a month to get access to scans. The question is how that fits with our requirements; it should show their PD, and I can transcribe them, but it’s behind a firewall, so …? I have not been able to find scans for the newspapers anywhere else.

I don't really know how that would work. From our perspective, PD is PD. How the transcription comes into being before being handed over to SE doesn't matter that much. But like PG, we would need some kind of proof that the transcription comes from PD scans.

Right, I haven’t seen them yet, but based on what I found when I did O. Henry, the newspaper scans will have the date of the newspaper on it, which proves they are PD. What I didn’t know is how that impacts us, since we won’t have the scans, we’ll just have seen them. (I’m assuming that making copies of scans behind a firewall for us to keep isn’t legal? Or at least proper? Or maybe it’s OK if we keep them to ourselves? Reasons I’m not a lawyer…)

I’m not sure all of the stories will fit within the omnibus, either; some of them are essays he wrote while he was in WWI, some others are supposedly political in nature as well, but we won’t know more until we get the text.

We can split it up into different ebooks by category, like "essays" or "short fiction". But like above, nonfiction political commentary is probably not within the collections policy.

Exactly. I’m really only interested in the short stories, but until I see the text of the unpublished (in books) ones, I don’t know what goes where.

[Anthony J. Bentley]

Faithful (“slavish”) copies of a public domain work are themselves public domain. This is well-established in US law. Therefore, they can be copied and redistributed with impunity. However, it is possible, perhaps likely, that it’s not true under UK law. An American entity under American jurisdiction can safely make a copy of those scans; such a copy should then be uploaded to the Internet Archive.

[Vince]

OK, I’ve updated my Saki spreadsheet, which is a superset of Hendrik’s (he only had the stories from the books). I added a column indicating whether the item should be included in a Short Fiction omnibus, and added notes for several of the parodies/satires. I also found that IA had back issues of The Bystander, so added links to the scans of those items.

Having finished with the second portion of the Comédie, I think I'll work on this next. My proposal is to include everything with a Y in the “Short?” column. Those are things that have either been published in a book (for which both scans and transcriptions exist), or scans (and possibly transcriptions) are freely available.

The original discussion is here on the list. At that time it was determined that the “Alice” parodies wouldn’t be included in Short Fiction. His plays and other types of essays from Square Egg don’t qualify, either.

For his work that was never included in a book, some of the scans are available for free, most of them are behind a paywall, also discussed in the thread originally, and a couple of them are not available anywhere online that I can find. Some of the ones behind a paywall are “known,” e.g. the Kipling parodies, and so are excluded based on that.

The items with a question mark in that column are behind the paywall, and I don’t know if they’re short stories or sketch parodies or essays or what. Someone (maybe me, maybe not) will have to come up with $15 for a month’s access to the British newspapers. A couple of them are from period magazines that I haven’t been able to find anywhere, and are not the British newspaper site, so they’re not available at all.

The ones with a N? are ones that seem to be “contemporary” (to the time period) satire, and which don’t seem to fit. But you (Alex) should probably check the links on one or two to see what you think. (The “What Mr. Chiozza Money Knows” I’m saying no on spec because Chiozza Money was an economic theorist of the time, and so I’m assuming that’s not short fiction.)

The ones with a Y? either look like short stories from their title (and publication), or the text is available and it looks viable. In all cases, the scans are behind the paywall, so we can’t include them right now anyway.

[Vince]

There are multiple stories that have names of flowers in italics, and the names are not taxonomy names, but what appear at first glance to be women’s names. I’m assuming they shouldn’t be italicized, but I’m afraid if they’re not marked somehow, it will be confusing. Quotes, maybe?

A couple of examples:

[Vince]

The make-url-safe function turns the title “Down Pens” into -down-pens. I assume we don’t want a leading dash on our IDs/filenames? The function removes trailing dashes, shouldn’t it also remove leading ones?

> On Sep 22, 2025, at 11:28 PM, Vince <vr_se...@letterboxes.org> wrote:
>
> There are multiple stories that have names of flowers in italics, and the names are not taxonomy names, but what appear at first glance to be women’s names. I’m assuming they shouldn’t be italicized, but I’m afraid if they’re not marked somehow, it will be confusing. Quotes, maybe?
>
> A couple of examples:
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/EAE2C7E0-FFFA-48F7-A773-4969608FBD30%40letterboxes.org.
> <PastedGraphic-1.png>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/EAE2C7E0-FFFA-48F7-A773-4969608FBD30%40letterboxes.org.
> <PastedGraphic-2.png>

[Alex Cabal]

The link to the spreadsheet goes to a PG ebook. What's the correct link?

On 9/20/25 4:09 PM, Vince wrote:
> OK, I’ve updated my Saki <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58201/58201-
> h/58201-h.htm> spreadsheet, which is a superset of Hendrik’s (he only

> had the stories from the books). I added a column indicating whether the
> item should be included in a Short Fiction omnibus, and added notes for
> several of the parodies/satires. I also found that IA had back issues

> of /The Bystander/, so added links to the scans of those items.
>
> Having finished with the second portion of the /Comédie/, I think I'll

> work on this next. My proposal is to include everything with a Y in the
> “Short?” column. Those are things that have either been published in a
> book (for which both scans and transcriptions exist), or scans (and
> possibly transcriptions) are freely available.
>

> The original discussion is here <https://groups.google.com/g/
> standardebooks/c/3_oQtwObMEk/m/EXPxJM1dAQAJ> on the list. At that time

> it was determined that the “Alice” parodies wouldn’t be included in

> Short Fiction. His plays and other types of essays from /Square
> Egg/ don’t qualify, either.

>
> For his work that was never included in a book, some of the scans are
> available for free, most of them are behind a paywall, also discussed in
> the thread originally, and a couple of them are not available anywhere
> online that I can find. Some of the ones behind a paywall are “known,”
> e.g. the Kipling parodies, and so are excluded based on that.
>
> The items with a question mark in that column are behind the paywall,
> and I don’t know if they’re short stories or sketch parodies or essays
> or what. Someone (maybe me, maybe not) will have to come up with $15 for
> a month’s access to the British newspapers. A couple of them are from
> period magazines that I haven’t been able to find anywhere, and are not
> the British newspaper site, so they’re not available at all.
>
> The ones with a N? are ones that seem to be “contemporary” (to the time
> period) satire, and which don’t seem to fit. But you (Alex) should
> probably check the links on one or two to see what you think. (The “What
> Mr. Chiozza Money Knows” I’m saying no on spec because Chiozza Money

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Chiozza_Money> was an economic

> theorist of the time, and so I’m assuming that’s not short fiction.)
>
> The ones with a Y? either look like short stories from their title (and
> publication), or the text is available and it looks viable. In all
> cases, the scans are behind the paywall, so we can’t include them right
> now anyway.
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com

> <mailto:standardebook...@googlegroups.com>.

> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/

> standardebooks/9595DD94-9260-437F-9E70-508EAEAF0C31%40letterboxes.org
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/
> standardebooks/9595DD94-9260-437F-9E70-508EAEAF0C31%40letterboxes.org?
> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[Alex Cabal]

I think scare quotes would be best for these. They are not taxonomy per
se so scare quotes will indicate that they are not meant to be read as
women's names.

[Alex Cabal]

Thanks, this has been fixed in master

[Vince]

Oops, sorry about that. It’s here.

[Alex Cabal]

Great work Vince. I've added the spreadsheet to the website.

Some notes:

- SE can pay for access to scans if you need. Put together a list of
websites that you would need a subscription for and I'll see what I can do.

- There are two Reginald books. If those are all shorts featuring the
same Reginald character, should we do a "Reginald Stories" omnibus
separately?

- Same question for Clovis

- Chiozza Money - what a name! It's even funnier that he changed it *to*
Money! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBam72eYsAg

On 9/20/25 4:09 PM, Vince wrote:

> OK, I’ve updated my Saki <https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58201/58201-
> h/58201-h.htm> spreadsheet, which is a superset of Hendrik’s (he only

> had the stories from the books). I added a column indicating whether the
> item should be included in a Short Fiction omnibus, and added notes for
> several of the parodies/satires. I also found that IA had back issues

> of /The Bystander/, so added links to the scans of those items.
>
> Having finished with the second portion of the /Comédie/, I think I'll

> work on this next. My proposal is to include everything with a Y in the
> “Short?” column. Those are things that have either been published in a
> book (for which both scans and transcriptions exist), or scans (and
> possibly transcriptions) are freely available.
>

> The original discussion is here <https://groups.google.com/g/
> standardebooks/c/3_oQtwObMEk/m/EXPxJM1dAQAJ> on the list. At that time

> it was determined that the “Alice” parodies wouldn’t be included in

> Short Fiction. His plays and other types of essays from /Square
> Egg/ don’t qualify, either.

>
> For his work that was never included in a book, some of the scans are
> available for free, most of them are behind a paywall, also discussed in
> the thread originally, and a couple of them are not available anywhere
> online that I can find. Some of the ones behind a paywall are “known,”
> e.g. the Kipling parodies, and so are excluded based on that.
>
> The items with a question mark in that column are behind the paywall,
> and I don’t know if they’re short stories or sketch parodies or essays
> or what. Someone (maybe me, maybe not) will have to come up with $15 for
> a month’s access to the British newspapers. A couple of them are from
> period magazines that I haven’t been able to find anywhere, and are not
> the British newspaper site, so they’re not available at all.
>
> The ones with a N? are ones that seem to be “contemporary” (to the time
> period) satire, and which don’t seem to fit. But you (Alex) should
> probably check the links on one or two to see what you think. (The “What
> Mr. Chiozza Money Knows” I’m saying no on spec because Chiozza Money

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Chiozza_Money> was an economic

> theorist of the time, and so I’m assuming that’s not short fiction.)
>
> The ones with a Y? either look like short stories from their title (and
> publication), or the text is available and it looks viable. In all
> cases, the scans are behind the paywall, so we can’t include them right
> now anyway.
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com

[Vince]

There’s a single website, the British Newspaper Archive. I’ll send you the details offline.

So, yes, good question. I have not done so, and would prefer not to do so, for these reasons.

1. Only the pseudonymous story in Reginald in Russia actually involves Reginald. The remaining thirteen stories do not.
2. Likewise, one of the stories in the Clovis book does not involve Clovis at all, and others only mention him only in the periphery. E.g., “Mrs. Packletides Tiger” has two mentions of him in two consecutive sentences, but otherwise he is not present. Same for “The Oversight,” “Wratislav” (only one reference), and others. IOW, like R in R, a number of the “Clovis” stories aren’t about Clovis at all.
3. If you look at the chronological order of the stories, i.e. the order they’ll appear in the omnibus, he wrote other stories, in the same paper, in the midst of both. IOW, an omnibus in chronological would present the stories in the same order they appeared to the public originally.
4. For a couple of reasons—his forays into novels, his “early” death in WWI (he was in his early forties)—he did not have anywhere near the volume of output that, e.g., O Henry, Maupassant, Chekhov, did (all of whom are over 800K, while this will be around 220K), and his shorts tend to be short. Splitting his work into three pieces will make for some pretty short works.
5. We have omnibuses for the others in the triumvarate (O Henry and Maupassant are the two he is most often mentioned with), and I would hate to have not have all of Munro's in one place as well. This is admittedly a bit of a sentimental reason, but I thought the above was enough even without it.

Thus, an omnibus is how I’ve proceeded—I am about to start proofreading. I can change it if you prefer, but I’m hoping not. :)

Yes, I thought the name was made up until I saw it on Wikipedia. Just from browsing while preparing everything for proofreading, Munro frequently makes up outlandish names, so I assumed this was another one. As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction.

[Alex Cabal]

Who are Reginald and Clovis then, if they don't appear in the stories?

On 9/25/25 3:14 PM, Vince wrote:
> There’s a single website, the British Newspaper Archive. I’ll send you
> the details offline.
>
> So, yes, good question. I have not done so, and would prefer not to do
> so, for these reasons.
>

> 1. Only the pseudonymous story in /Reginald in Russia /actually

> involves Reginald. The remaining thirteen stories do not.

> 2. Likewise, one of the stories in the Clovis book does not involve

> Clovis at all, and others only mention him only in the periphery.
> E.g., “Mrs. Packletides Tiger” has two mentions of him in two
> consecutive sentences, but otherwise he is not present. Same for
> “The Oversight,” “Wratislav” (only one reference), and others. IOW,

> like /R in R/, a number of the “Clovis” stories aren’t about Clovis
> at all.
> 3. If you look at the chronological order of the stories, i.e. the

> order they’ll appear in the omnibus, he wrote other stories, in the
> same paper, in the midst of both. IOW, an omnibus in chronological
> would present the stories in the same order they appeared to the
> public originally.

> 4. For a couple of reasons—his forays into novels, his “early” death in

> WWI (he was in his early forties)—he did not have anywhere near the
> volume of output that, e.g., O Henry, Maupassant, Chekhov, did (all
> of whom are over 800K, while this will be around 220K), and his

> shorts tend to be /short/. Splitting his work into three pieces will

> make for some pretty short works.

> 5. We have omnibuses for the others in the triumvarate (O Henry and

> Maupassant are the two he is most often mentioned with), and I would
> hate to have not have all of Munro's in one place as well. This is
> admittedly a bit of a sentimental reason, but I thought the above
> was enough even without it.
>
>
> Thus, an omnibus is how I’ve proceeded—I am about to start proofreading.
> I can change it if you prefer, but I’m hoping not. :)
>
> Yes, I thought the name was made up until I saw it on Wikipedia. Just
> from browsing while preparing everything for proofreading, Munro
> frequently makes up outlandish names, so I assumed this was another one.
> As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction.
>
>> On Sep 25, 2025, at 1:35 PM, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org> wrote:
>>
>> Great work Vince. I've added the spreadsheet to the website.
>>
>> Some notes:
>>
>> - SE can pay for access to scans if you need. Put together a list of
>> websites that you would need a subscription for and I'll see what I
>> can do.
>>
>> - There are two Reginald books. If those are all shorts featuring the
>> same Reginald character, should we do a "Reginald Stories" omnibus
>> separately?
>>
>> - Same question for Clovis
>>
>> - Chiozza Money - what a name! It's even funnier that he changed it
>> *to* Money! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBam72eYsAg
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:standardebook...@googlegroups.com>.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/

> standardebooks/5CB7E0E6-9D63-4D9D-A6F3-258C163FF761%40letterboxes.org
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/5CB7E0E6-9D63-4D9D-
> A6F3-258C163FF761%40letterboxes.org?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[Vince]

They don’t appear in all the stories. Reginald is in most (all?) of the stories in the first book (Reginald), but his sole story in the second book was just used as the book’s title. Clovis is a recurring character in the stories in the Clovis book, but sometimes he’s a bit player (or less) rather than the protagonist.

[Alex Cabal]

Alright then, send a repo link once you're ready. Thanks!

On 9/25/25 3:41 PM, Vince wrote:
> They don’t appear in /all/ the stories. Reginald is in most (all?) of
> the stories in the first book (/Reginald/), but his sole story in the

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:standardebook...@googlegroups.com>.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/

> standardebooks/1AF4C675-5FC8-4C18-BF47-B7618206755C%40letterboxes.org
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/1AF4C675-5FC8-4C18-
> BF47-B7618206755C%40letterboxes.org?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[Vince]

I created it and then forgot to include the link in my first email. It’s always something.

Repository here.

[Alex Cabal]

OK, Emma will manage this with David reviewing.

On 9/25/25 4:14 PM, Vince wrote:
> I created it and then forgot to include the link in my first email. It’s
> always something.
>

> Repository here <https://github.com/vr8hub/saki_short-fiction>.

>
>> On Sep 25, 2025, at 3:46 PM, Alex Cabal <al...@standardebooks.org> wrote:
>>
>> Alright then, send a repo link once you're ready. Thanks!
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:standardebook...@googlegroups.com>.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/

> standardebooks/CED88AFF-6D90-4D70-BE2D-415D16EA1BB4%40letterboxes.org
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/CED88AFF-6D90-4D70-
> BE2D-415D16EA1BB4%40letterboxes.org?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[Alex Cabal]

I've adapted your spreadsheet to the new template:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16gwu7budNrwywSFXqt1t9eicd-D6oJRZw_U58FCXRFk

Please use and update this new spreadsheet as you continue working. Once
you add an item to the omnibus, check the box and the row will turn
green to indicate it's complete.

For items in which including them was a question mark, I put the omnibus
name as "Short Fiction?"

Once you decide on what to include, remove the question mark from that
item to organize it under the actual omnibus, or empty the cell to
indicate that it's not included in any omnibus.

Thanks!

On 9/25/25 3:41 PM, Vince wrote:

> They don’t appear in /all/ the stories. Reginald is in most (all?) of
> the stories in the first book (/Reginald/), but his sole story in the

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:standardebook...@googlegroups.com>.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/

[Alex Cabal]

I think it would also be worth it to fill out the "Type" column for all
the entries, so we can decide if we want to do other omnibuses, like
essay, etc.

[Vince]

I’ve downloaded all the newspaper pages that are available; two of the stories are in the Morning Post but in years that the British Newspaper Archive doesn’t have.

Most of the ones I downloaded turned out not to be short stories, so won’t go in Short Fiction.

I’ve updated everything I know in the spreadsheet. The Types probably need to be standardized, e.g. the Alice stories have accompanying sketches, so could be considered Sketch parody, or Sketch satire, or Satire with sketches. The individual newspaper versions are shorter, usually only two or three pictures and accompanying text, but they’re the same concept—the sketches are usually parodies of contemporary political characters, either of animals (the Jungle Book story parodies), or something else. All of those should probably be a single type, maybe Sketch parodies. I’ll think about it some more and update the spreadsheet later; they all have something now, so cleaning it up should be relatively easy once I decide on terms.

The list for the Short Fiction omnibus is pretty much complete, unless I can lay my hands on the three or four stories that I haven’t been able to find anywhere as of now. I’ve found transcriptions of a couple of them, just no scans that prove PD.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/fed7511f-faa7-407e-bdfb-6522f08508f2%40standardebooks.org.

[Alex Cabal]

OK great, thanks!

For the page scans, if they're small enough you can zip them up and
email to me so I can put them in our backup archive. If they're too big,
you should have root access to the SE server so scp them to your home
folder and I'll take them from there.

On 9/26/25 11:56 PM, Vince wrote:
> I’ve downloaded all the newspaper pages that are available; two of the

> stories are in the /Morning Post/ but in years that the British

> Newspaper Archive doesn’t have.
>
> Most of the ones I downloaded turned out not to be short stories, so
> won’t go in Short Fiction.
>
> I’ve updated everything I know in the spreadsheet. The Types probably
> need to be standardized, e.g. the Alice stories have accompanying
> sketches, so could be considered Sketch parody, or Sketch satire, or
> Satire with sketches. The individual newspaper versions are shorter,
> usually only two or three pictures and accompanying text, but they’re
> the same concept—the sketches are usually parodies of contemporary
> political characters, either of animals (the Jungle Book story
> parodies), or something else. All of those should probably be a single
> type, maybe Sketch parodies. I’ll think about it some more and update

> the spreadsheet later; they all have /something/ now, so cleaning it up

>> bdfb-6522f08508f2%40standardebooks.org <https://groups.google.com/d/
>> msgid/standardebooks/fed7511f-faa7-407e-
>> bdfb-6522f08508f2%40standardebooks.org>.

>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send

> an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:standardebook...@googlegroups.com>.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/

> standardebooks/4DB90618-EAE1-4638-ACB1-F3E04D3A28FD%40letterboxes.org
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/4DB90618-EAE1-4638-
> ACB1-F3E04D3A28FD%40letterboxes.org?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[Vince]

Emma, in a few of the stories (two or three?), subtitles from the original publications in the paper have been merged in with the titles in the books in which the stories appear.

For example, Filboid Studge looks like this in the original newspaper:

But it looks like this in the Clovis book in which it appears:

It (and the others) make more sense to me as the original subtitle, but obviously I can format them either way. Thanks!

[Emma Sweeney]

I agree, the original title/subtitle structure makes more sense.

Emma

[Vince]

Emma, there is a mention of Mendelssohn’s “songs without clothes.”

I’m assuming this is alluding to his “Songs Without Words.” What I’m not sure of is whether I should tag it with anything—Wiki says it’s a “series of short lyrical piano works,” which doesn’t sound like it would get italics, although later it says “The eight volumes of …,” which sounds like it might. And, it’s obviously not a direct reference, just a comical broadside about it.

I’m leaning towards leaving it as is, no tags, but if you feel differently let me know.

[Emma Sweeney]

I think this needs italics. This would be considered a song cycle, which is a type of "long musical composition".

Emma

[Vince]

Great, will do, thanks. I’ll just use se:name.music since we don’t have anything more specific.

Finding a cover for these omnibuses is always something of a challenge. How about this abstractish one from our artwork?

[Emma Sweeney]

Looks good! I've updated the art db.

Emma

[Vince]

One more subtitle question, Emma, and I think (hope) I'm done.

In transitioning from the original newspaper/magazines to the books, these stories lost their subtitles. I would like to retain them, if it’s OK. I think they all add something—foreboding, foreshadowing, humor—to their respective stories.


“Down Pens”: A Suggestion, Morning Post newspaper

[Vince]

Oops, sorry, one more question.

I know we don’t normally put an author’s actual name in the metadata if they used a pseudonym. However, unlike most of our authors who used pseudonyms, Munro went by his name/initials (typically H. H. Munro, occasionally H. H. M.) as often as he did his pseudonym. E.g., with one exception, he used H. H. Munro exclusively in the Morning Post. All of his books also have both his pseudonym and name (see below) in them.

Given that, do we want to put his name, either in part (H. H. Munro) or in full (Hector Hugh Munro) or both anywhere in the metadata?

Reginald

Reginald in Russia

Chronicles of Clovis

Toys of Peace

 Beasts and Super-Beasts

The Square Egg

[Emma Sweeney]

1. That sounds fine.

2. I think you can put H. H. Munro in the metadata. You may also want to mention it in the long description.

Emma

[Vince]

David, I believe this is ready for review.

Thanks to some scan help from a couple of other Saki scholars/researchers, ours is, as far as I have been able to determine, the only Saki collection in existence that contains 100% of his short stories.

[David]

Okay! Great to be involved in the definitive edition. :) It will likely be the weekend before I can get to it, though.

D.

[Alex Cabal]

Very cool Vince! Glad to have that in our corpus.

On 10/22/25 6:27 PM, Vince wrote:
> David, I believe this <https://github.com/vr8hub/saki_short-fiction> is

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:standardebook...@googlegroups.com>.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/

> standardebooks/0C0209B2-BCEE-4A07-9A4E-C94C7B54DA89%40letterboxes.org
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/0C0209B2-
> BCEE-4A07-9A4E-C94C7B54DA89%40letterboxes.org?
> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[David]

A bit of space opened up, so I was able to get to this today, Vince. Exemplary work, as ever! Just a couple tiny tweaks suggest in my "review".

D.

[David]

I believe this is now ready for you, Alex.

[Alex Cabal]

OK, looks good Vince, great work. I've released it!

It was a huge task to compile this, find all the scans, and put together
this very large ebook. I'm very pleased that SE can now say we host the
only complete Saki short fiction collection out there. Thanks!

On 10/24/25 10:43 AM, David wrote:
> I believe this is now ready <https://github.com/vr8hub/saki_short-
> fiction> for you, Alex.

>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Standard Ebooks" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:standardebook...@googlegroups.com>.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/

> standardebooks/4465da8c-cd98-462a-82ad-b830bb4150den%40googlegroups.com
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/4465da8c-
> cd98-462a-82ad-b830bb4150den%40googlegroups.com?
> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[Robin Whittleton]

Yep, big congratulations. I love it when we manage to publish short stories that have been forgotten

-Robin

> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to standardebook...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/783dc9df-9105-44dd-b27c-dcef9adfd99b%40standardebooks.org.

[Vince]

Thank you, though to be clear, the credit of identifying the “forgotten” stories lies with others—Bruce Gaston of Annotated Saki and Lora Sifurova. They also helped our cause by providing a couple of scans that were not available anywhere online. We were just able to reap the reward by being able to include those stories along with all of his others. I believe everything of Munro's has been published somewhere (including online), we’re just the first place that I know of that has all of the short stories in one place.