The Witches was published by Jonathan Cape in 1983, with illustrations by Quentin Blake, and is Dahl’s most genuinely frightening children’s book — the one that gives children nightmares, that parents have tried to ban, and that won the Whitbread Children’s Book Award for its uncompromising vision of evil disguised as respectability. It is also, characteristically, very funny.
The Novel
A boy (unnamed throughout) lives with his Norwegian grandmother after his parents die in a car accident. The grandmother — a former “witchophile” who has studied witches all her life — teaches him the truth: witches are real. They look like ordinary women. They hate children with “a red-hot sizzling hatred.” And they are organized internationally under a Grand High Witch.
On holiday at a hotel in Bournemouth, the boy accidentally witnesses the Annual Meeting of All the Witches of England — disguised as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. He overhears the Grand High Witch’s plan: to spike every sweet shop in England with “Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker,” which will turn every child in the country into a mouse.
The witches discover the boy spying and turn him into a mouse — but he escapes. In mouse form, with his grandmother’s help, he steals the Mouse-Maker formula and doses the witches’ own dinner. They all turn into mice and are destroyed by the hotel staff.
The novel’s most daring element is its ending: the boy remains a mouse. He is not transformed back. He and his grandmother accept this — “How long does a mouse live?” he asks. “Three years,” she says. “Good,” he replies. “That’s about the same as me.” They will die together.
Controversy
The ending was changed in the 1990 film (directed by Nicolas Roeg, with Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch) — the boy is turned back into a human. Dahl was furious: the original ending’s acceptance of mortality and its refusal of easy consolation were, he felt, exactly what made the book honest. Children face the truth; adults demand reassurance.
The book has been challenged by parents who find it misogynistic (all witches are women; the descriptions of their ugliness beneath disguise are savage) or simply too frightening for young readers. Dahl’s defenders argue that fear is a valid emotion for children’s literature to evoke, and that the book’s power comes precisely from its refusal to be safe.
Collecting The Witches
First edition (Jonathan Cape, London, 1983): Purple boards with gilt lettering. Dust jacket illustrated by Quentin Blake.
Identification points:
- Jonathan Cape imprint
- “First published 1983” stated
- Illustrations by Quentin Blake
- 208 pages
Market values:
- Fine in dust jacket: $800–$2,500
- Very good in jacket: $300–$800
First American edition (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1983): Published the same year. $200–$600 in jacket.
Signed copies: $2,000–$6,000.
The Whitbread Award, the two film adaptations (1990 and 2020), and the book’s reputation as Dahl’s most artistically uncompromising children’s novel sustain strong collecting interest.