Articles/Interviews

Book and Magazine Collector (April 1994) Introduction

TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED

Roald Dahl once boasted, with a typical lack of modesty, that his name was known to virtually every child in the western world, but he might also have added that he was a familiar figure to quite a few adults as well.

In recent years, Dahl's immense success as a children's author has tended to eclipse his earlier career as a short-story writer. Between 1946 and 1974, he published four collections of adult tales that won him a huge readership on both sides of the Atlantic. He was particularly popular in America, where he received over $2,000 a story!

He was less successful as a novelist, his first long work of fiction, Sometime Never, disappearing without trace when it was published in 1949, and his second, My Uncle Oswald (1979), faring little better. Nevertheless, it is these adult works that now attract the highest prices from collectors, with his earliest titles fetching three-figure sums in their dustjackets. Our main feature this month looks at this aspect of Dahl's work.