Roald Dahl Facts: Children’s books only came after a failed career as a writer of rather adult stories.
Wikimedia CommonsOne of Dahl’s short stories, “The Devious Bachelor,” as published in Collier’s in 1953.
Seeking to join the pantheon of serious literary greats like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dahl as a young man would regularly publish what New York Magazine calls “twistedly addictive short stories” to Collier’s, Harper’s, and The New Yorker.
Eventually, Maxwell Perkins — the legendary editor of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Tom Wolfe — approached Dahl, asking to publish his first novel. Dahl sent the manuscript, Sometime Never: A Fable for Supermen to Perkins, where it would sit, unopened. Perkins died days later.
Sometime Never, written about nuclear war, still made it to press. Critics generally panned it, and today is only available for purchase in the Netherlands. Thirteen years after Perkins’ death and the failure of Dahl’s first adult novel, he published his first children’s book, James and the Giant Peach. Incidentally, British publishers were wary of James for being “too adult.”
Dahl had a totally different vision of “Matilda” than readers think.
YouTubeA still from the 1996 film adaptation of Mathilda.
Upon reading a draft, editor Stephen Roxburgh had one word for Dahl’s most popular book, Matilda: Hopeless.
Dahl, at this point in his 70s and with failing health, originally made the girl prodigy a “wicked” character who, at the story’s climax, would use her telekinetic powers to rig a horse race and help her teacher improve her finances. Dahl’s original Matilda — who some critics have described as a “devilish little hussy” — dies at the race.
Dahl admitted that he “got it wrong” on the first try, and actually rewrote the entire book, the first time in his life he had done so. Still, Dahl worked to get Matilda right — which meant leaving Roxburgh and taking the book to Penguin — and as his last book, it was his most successful.
Enjoy these Roald Dahl facts? Next, read about the dark sides of your favorite children’s book authors. Then, check out The Seven Lady Godivas, the Dr. Seuss picture book filled with naked ladies. Finally, have a look at some of the most memorable words ever uttered and written by Ernest Hemingway.
