Who Wrote A Bomb For His Beloved And When Was It Published?

I’ll toss in a quicker, more casual take: 'A Bomb for His Beloved' was written by H. H. Munro, who wrote under the pen name Saki, and it was published in 1914 as part of the collection 'Beasts and Super-Beasts'. I found the story to be one of those sharp little barbs that Saki excels at—he delivers social satire with deadpan precision. Reading it now, it feels like a time capsule of Edwardian manners being punctured by dark humor, which is exactly why I go back to Saki when I want something witty but a little wicked.

Hector Hugh Munro, better known by his pen name Saki, is the writer commonly credited with 'A Bomb for His Beloved', and it appears in his 1914 collection 'Beasts and Super-Beasts'. The piece carries Saki's signature mix of wicked wit and sharp social observation, and the timing fits his late pre-war output—he was publishing a steady stream of short stories and sketches right up until he went to the front in World War I.

When I read that story years ago, what struck me most was how Saki uses an almost jaunty voice to set up a little moral vise: ordinary social manners bending toward the absurd and then snapping. The 1914 publication date puts the work in a charged moment—Europe on the brink of massive change, with satire and lampooning of the comfortable classes feeling both timely and oddly timeless. If you’re tracing the story’s life, it originally showed up in periodicals before being gathered in 'Beasts and Super-Beasts', which is where most readers encounter it now.

Technically, the tale reads like a polished magazine piece, compact and pointed, and that’s classic Saki—he was a master of the short-form sting. Even if you only skim through Saki’s oeuvre, you’ll recognize his flair for putting a refined upper-crust scene under a magnifying glass and letting something ridiculous or cruel fall out. That contrast between civilized talk and underlying animal impulses is what makes 'A Bomb for His Beloved' land so well, and why it’s still anthologized in collections of early 20th-century short fiction. Personally, I love how it sneaks up on you—witty on the surface, quietly savage underneath, and very much of its 1914 moment.