Dahl, Roald
Entry updated 10 April 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1916-1990) Welsh-born author of Norwegian parents who spent periods of his life in the USA, but lived in the UK in his later years; married to the actress Patricia Neal 1953-1983; he also wrote as by Pegasus. Though his enormous success as an author of children's stories has tended to dominate perceptions of his career, he was in fact long best known for his eerie, exquisitely crafted, somewhat poisonous adult tales, many of them fantasies, though the first of his collections, Over to You: 10 Stories of Flyers and Flying (coll 1946), contains only one title of interest, "They Shall Not Grow Old" (March 1945 Ladies Home Journal), which combines time dilation (see Relativity; Time Distortion) and Posthumous Fantasy in a celebration of the fate of pilots shot down in combat during World War Two, in which Dahl served. Deadpan, reader-friendly and slightly tricksy, this tale is predictive of later work, assembled in Someone Like You (coll 1953; cut 1954), Kiss Kiss (coll 1960), Switch Bitch (coll 1974), with further stories (most of minor interest) variously assembled; relevant titles include Tales of the Unexpected (coll 1979) and More Roald Dahl Tales of the Unexpected (coll 1980; vt More Tales of the Unexpected 1980; vt Further Tales of the Unexpected 1981), both assembled as Roald Dahl's Completely Unexpected Tales (omni 1986); Two Fables (coll 1986 chap); Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life (coll 1989); and The Collected Short Stories (coll 1991), which includes some new work.
These stories, composed over nearly half a century, sometimes make use of elements from the SF Megatext, like the horrific Brain in a Box featured in "William and Mary" and the unpleasant metamorphosis of human into bee in "Royal Jelly" (both first published in Kiss Kiss), both clearly too displeasing for magazine publication; but more generally it is the threat of sf or supernatural displacement that powers them. The same can be said of the Television series Tales of the Unexpected (1979-1988), which sprang from these tales and in many ways defined Dahl's reputation as a writer for adults. Dahl was a master of dis-ease; he was not a speculative writer. An earlier television presentation of a number of his stories, hosted by Dahl himself, was the less successful and soon cancelled 'Way Out (1961).
Dahl's first published book was a children's fantasy, The Gremlins (short story format December 1942 Cosmopolitan as by Pegasus; 1943 chap), a heavily illustrated tale about World War Two that became famous because Walt Disney (see the Walt Disney Company), for whom it was written, dickered for a time with making an animated film of it (there is no connection with the much later Joe Dante film Gremlins). As he drew a set of captionless two-page tales featuring the gremlins in 1943-1944 for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, it is likely that Walt Kelly [for Disney and Kelly here and Posthumous Fantasy below see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below], creator of the arguably gremlin-like Pogo, was also involved both in the abortive film and in illustrating the book itself. The book rendering of gremlins is in his style.
Dahl's only sf novel, Some Time Never: A Fable for Supermen (1948), by some margin his worst book, recasts elements from The Gremlins for an adult audience. After attempting to sabotage humanity during World War Two, the long-submerged gremlins see that we ourselves are doing the job quite adequately; they take back control of the planet after World War Three, which is quickly followed by World War Four; but then, as their existence depends on the humans who have imagined them, become extinct in a world bare of their imaginers (see End of the World), leaving any future Evolution to non-mammalian species.
The strained and sour whimsy of this "fable" might be seen – according to Dahl's critics – as passing directly into his juvenile fantasies, though it would probably be fairer to acknowledge a world of difference between adult spitefulness and the unshockable child's-eye view of grown-ups and the meting of justice unto them presented in James and the Giant Peach (1961) and all its successors, the most famous being Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), filmed as Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) and remade as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005); it was assembled with its sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972), as The Complete Adventures of Charlie and Mr Willy Wonka (omni 1987). James and the Giant Peach features friendly giant insects and a giant spider (see Great and Small) inhabiting the titular fruit, which travels on a Fantastic Voyage; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is full of bizarre confectionery-related Machines and Inventions; Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator introduces inimical Aliens; a humanoid "Big Friendly Giant" is central to The BFG (1982), filmed as The BFG (2016) directed by Steven Spielberg; and the sympathetic eponym of Matilda (1988) discovers she can use Telekinesis to discomfit a monstrous, bullying adult.
Dahl also co-scripted the 1968 film adaptation of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car (1964) by Ian Fleming and wrote the screenplay for the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967), the latter bearing little resemblance to Fleming's novel of the same title. One late novel for adults followed, the raunchy, quasi-historical, borderline-Steampunk My Uncle Oswald (1979), which inter alia plays with the notion of "tapping" geniuses such as Sigmund Freud and George Bernard Shaw for purposes of artificial insemination – spermpunk, in short.
If the adult work was, in the end, lacking in joy, the stories for children were, in the end, generously wicked gifts of fable, though stains of his scapegoating prejudices – some of them vile – seep into realms better meant for escape. In 1983 Dahl received the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement. [JC/DRL]
Roald Dahl
born Llandaff, Wales: 13 September 1916
died Oxford, Oxfordshire: 23 November 1990
works
for adults (selected)
series
Tales of the Unexpected
- Tales of the Unexpected (London: Michael Joseph, 1979) [coll: Tales of the Unexpected: hb/]
- More Roald Dahl Tales of the Unexpected (London: Michael Joseph, 1980) [coll: Tales of the Unexpected: hb/]
- More Tales of the Unexpected (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1980) [coll: vt of the above: Tales of the Unexpected: hb/]
- Further Tales of the Unexpected (London: Cedric Chivers, 1980) [coll: vt of the above: Tales of the Unexpected: hb/]
- Roald Dahl's Completely Unexpected Tales (London: Penguin Books, 1986) [omni of the above two: Tales of the Unexpected: pb/]
individual titles
- Some Time Never: A Fable for Supermen (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1948) [hb/uncredited]
- Sometime Never (London: Collins, 1949) [vt of the above: hb/]
- My Uncle Oswald (London: Michael Joseph, 1979) [hb/]
collections
- Over to You: 10 Stories of Flyers and Flying (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1946) [coll: hb/Roger Furse]
- Someone Like You (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1953) [coll: hb/Charles E Skaggs]
- Someone Like You (London: Secker and Warburg, 1954) [cut version of the above with 2 stories omitted: hb/]
- Kiss Kiss (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1960) [coll: hb/Charles E Skaggs]
- Switch Bitch (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1974) [coll: hb/Charles Shields]
- The Best of Roald Dahl (New York: Vintage Books, 1978) [coll: pb/]
- The Best of Roald Dahl (New York: Vintage Books, 1990) [coll: exp of the above: pb/]
- A Roald Dahl Selection: Nine Short Stories (London: Longman, 1980) [coll: pb/]
- Two Fables (London: Viking International, 1986) [coll: chap: trade hb/Bet Ayer: limited edition/nonpictorial]
- A Second Roald Dahl Selection: Eight Short Stories (London: Longman, 1987) [coll: pb/]
- Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life (London: Michael Joseph, 1989) [coll: hb/]
- The Collected Short Stories (London: Jonathan Cape, 1991) [coll: hb/]
- Lamb to the Slaughter and Other Stories (New York: Viking Penguin, 1995) [coll: pb/]
- The Great Automatic Grammatizator and Other Stories (London: Viking, 1996) [coll: pb/]
- The Umbrella Man and Other Stories (New York: Viking, 1998) [coll: vt of the above: pb/]
- The Roald Dahl Treasury (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997) [coll: hb/Quentin Blake]
- Skin and Other Stories (London: Penguin Books/Puffin, 2000) [coll: pb/]
- A Taste of the Unexpected (London: Penguin Books, 2005) [coll: pb/]
- Collected Stories (New York: Alfred A Knopf/Everyman, 2006) [coll: contents differ from The Collected Short Stories above: hb/]
- Cruelty (London: Penguin Books, 2016) [coll: pb/]
for children
series
Charlie
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1964) [Charlie: hb/Joseph Schindelman]
- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1972) [Charlie: hb/Joseph Schindelman]
- The Complete Adventures of Charlie and Mr Willy Wonka (London: Unwin Hyman, 1987) [omni of the above and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Charlie: hb/Michael Foreman]
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2002) [omni: vt of the above: Charlie: hb/Quentin Blake]
- The Complete Adventures of Charlie and Mr Willy Wonka (London: Unwin Hyman, 1987) [omni of the above and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Charlie: hb/Michael Foreman]
individual titles (selected)
- The Gremlins: from the Walt Disney Production: A Royal Air Force Story (New York: Random House/Sydney, New South Wales: Ayres and James, 1943) [story: graph: US and Australian settings identical: priority of release not known: hb/Walt Kelly?]
- James and the Giant Peach (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1961) [hb/Lane Smith]
- The Magic Finger (London: Harper and Row, 1966) [chap: hb/William Pène du Bois]
- Fantastic Mr Fox (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1970) [hb/]
- Danny the Champion of the World (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1975) [illus/hb/Jill Bennett]
- The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1977) [coll: hb/Paul Bacon]
- The BFG (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982) [hb/Quentin Blake]
- The Witches (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983) [hb/Quentin Blake]
- Matilda (London: Jonathan Cape, 1988) [hb/Quentin Blake]
- The Minpins (London: Jonathan Cape, 1991) [chap: illus/hb/Patrick Benson]
- Wonderful, Wicked and Whizzpopping: the Stories Characters, and Inventions of Roald Dahl (New York: Random House Puffin, 2017) with Stella Caldwell [coll: chap: hb/Quentin Blake]
works as editor
- Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983) [anth: hb/Craig Dodd and Sophie Baker]
about the author
- Matthew Dennison. Teller of the Unexpected: The Life of Roald Dahl, An Unofficial Biography (London: Head of Zeus/Apollo, 2022) [biography: hb/]
- Matthew Dennison. Roald Dahl: Teller of the Unexpected: A Biography (New York; Pegasus, 2023) [biography: vt of the above: hb/photographic]
links
- Roald Dahl
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Disney; Walt Kelly.
- Picture Gallery
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