By H. Munro

Hector Munro (pseudonym Saki, 1870-1916) is a British novelist and a short-story writer. He is best known for his short stories. Owing to the death of his mother and his father's absence abroad he was brought up during child­hood, with his elder brother and sister, by a grandmother and two aunts. It seems probable that their stern and unsympathetic methods account for Munro's strong dislike of anything that smacks of the conventional and the self-righteous. He satirized things that he hated. Munro was killed on the French front during the first world war.

In her Biography of Saki Munro's sister writes: "One of Munro's aunts, Au­gusta, was a woman of ungovernable temper, of fierce likes and dislikes, imperi­ous, a moral coward, possessing no brains worth speaking of, and a primitive disposition." Naturally the last person who should have been in charge of child­ren. The character of the aunt in The Lumber-Room is Aunt Augusta to the life.