Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl was the most subversive children’s author of the twentieth century — a writer whose books gleefully violated every rule of respectable juvenile fiction by making adults stupid, cruel, and ugly, by rewarding children for disobedience and cunning, by describing violence and bodily functions with unabashed relish, and by creating a fictional world in which the conventional moral hierarchies of children’s literature (be good, obey your parents, brush your teeth) were systematically inverted. Children adored him. Adults — particularly teachers, librarians, and literary critics — were ambivalent. He was also a superb writer of macabre adult short stories, a war hero, a spy, a chocolate connoisseur, and a deeply difficult man whose personal life was marked by tragedy, cruelty, and controversy.

Llandaff and the War

Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in Llandaff, Cardiff, to Norwegian parents. His father died when he was three, and his mother sent him to a series of English boarding schools that he loathed — the brutal discipline and institutional sadism of these schools provided material for his fiction and for his memoir Boy (1984), which describes with relish the caning, bullying, and general awfulness of 1930s English public school life.

He joined the Royal Air Force at the outbreak of World War II, trained as a fighter pilot in Nairobi, and crashed his Gladiator biplane in the Libyan desert, suffering severe injuries to his skull, spine, and hips. After recovering, he flew Hurricanes in the Battle of Athens and shot down enemy aircraft before headaches and blackouts forced him out of combat flying. He was posted to Washington, D.C., as an air attaché, where he met C.S. Forester, who encouraged him to write about his war experiences. His first published story, “Shot Down Over Libya” (retitled “A Piece of Cake”), appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1942.

The Adult Stories

Dahl’s adult short stories — collected in Someone Like You (1953), Kiss Kiss (1960), Switch Bitch (1974), and The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (1977) — are masterpieces of the macabre. They are tightly plotted, wickedly ironic, and built around surprise endings of diabolical ingenuity. “Lamb to the Slaughter” (a woman kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, then serves it to the investigating detectives), “The Landlady” (a sweet old woman who is actually a taxidermist), and “William and Mary” (a man’s brain kept alive in a basin) are among the most anthologised short stories in the English language.

The Children’s Books

James and the Giant Peach (1961) was Dahl’s first children’s novel — the story of an orphan who escapes his horrible aunts by traveling inside a giant peach with a crew of oversized insects. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) was his most famous — the story of a poor boy who wins a tour of Willy Wonka’s fantastical chocolate factory, where badly behaved children meet grotesque and satisfying punishments. The book has sold over 20 million copies.

The subsequent children’s books — Fantastic Mr Fox (1970), Danny, the Champion of the World (1975), The Twits (1980), The BFG (1982), The Witches (1983), Matilda (1988) — continued in the same vein: anarchic, cruel to the deserving, generous to the virtuous, and written in a prose style of deceptive simplicity that concealed meticulous craftsmanship.

Controversies

Dahl was a deeply controversial figure. His antisemitic comments — made publicly and repeatedly throughout his life — were indefensible and have become an increasing source of discomfort. In 2020, his family issued a formal apology. His treatment of his first wife, the actress Patricia Neal, during and after her catastrophic strokes, was by some accounts heroic and by others controlling and cruel. His personality was widely described as bullying, vain, and vindictive.

The Quentin Blake Partnership

From The Enormous Crocodile (1978) onward, Dahl’s children’s books were illustrated by Quentin Blake, whose scratchy, exuberant, instantly recognisable drawings became inseparable from Dahl’s text. Blake retroactively illustrated the earlier books as well, and his versions have become the standard editions. The Dahl-Blake partnership is one of the great author-illustrator collaborations in children’s literature, comparable to Tenniel and Carroll or Shepard and Milne.

In 2023, Dahl’s publisher Puffin Books controversially announced that new editions of his books would be edited to remove or alter language deemed offensive — descriptions of characters as “fat” or “ugly” were softened, gendered language was changed, and references to race were modified. The backlash was swift and fierce, and the publisher partially reversed course, agreeing to keep the original texts available alongside the revised editions. The controversy highlighted the tension between Dahl’s deliberately provocative, anarchic sensibility and contemporary sensitivity standards.

Critical Reception and Legacy

Dahl is the most commercially successful British children’s author of the twentieth century, rivalled only by J.K. Rowling. His books have sold over 300 million copies worldwide and have been translated into over sixty languages. His influence on children’s literature — the permission to be subversive, to respect children’s appetite for the grotesque and the anarchic, to write about adults with contempt and about children with affection — is permanent.

His adult short stories, while less discussed, are among the finest in the English tradition of the macabre — they deserve comparison with Saki, M.R. James, and Shirley Jackson.

The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire (where he lived and wrote), and the continued commercial success of his estate (including Netflix’s acquisition of the Roald Dahl Story Company) ensure that his cultural presence remains enormous.

Key Works

• The Gremlins (1943)
• Someone Like You (1953, adult stories)
• Kiss Kiss (1960, adult stories)
• James and the Giant Peach (1961)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
• Fantastic Mr Fox (1970)
• Danny, the Champion of the World (1975)
• The BFG (1982)
• The Witches (1983)
• Boy (1984, memoir)
• Matilda (1988)

Collecting Dahl

Dahl’s first editions are collected in both American (Knopf) and British (Allen & Unwin, Jonathan Cape, Puffin) editions, with the American editions generally commanding higher prices for the children’s books.

The Gremlins (1943, Random House/Walt Disney) — his first book — is genuinely rare and commands $1,000–$5,000 in fine condition.

James and the Giant Peach (1961, Knopf) with Nancy Ekholm Burkert illustrations in first edition with jacket is a major target, at $2,000–$8,000.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964, Knopf) is the most famous title. First editions in jacket — with the original Joseph Schindelman illustrations — bring $2,000–$8,000 in fine condition. The first-issue jacket features a price of $3.95.

Someone Like You (1953, Knopf) is the key adult story collection, at $200–$600.

Matilda (1988, Jonathan Cape UK / Viking US) and The Witches (1983, Jonathan Cape / Farrar, Straus and Giroux) are collected at $200–$600 for fine first editions.

UK editions with Quentin Blake illustrations (Jonathan Cape, from 1978) are separately collected and represent the versions most readers know.

Dahl signed readily throughout his career at events, bookshops, and for children who wrote to him. Signed copies are available but signed first editions of the early children’s books — particularly James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — command premiums of $5,000–$15,000. Inscribed copies to children, with personal messages, are particularly charming and collect well.