Roald Dahl - A Library of Mischief and Magic - Sixteen First Editions, 1972-1991 - In Dust Jackets

DAHL, ROALD. A Library of Mischief and Magic. Sixteen First Editions, 1972-1991, Including The BFG, Matilda and The Witches, in Original Dust Jackets.

DAHL, Roald. A highly appealing collection of sixteen first edition, first impression books, published between 1972 and 1991, bringing together many of the author's most enduring works for children alongside his two autobiographical volumes. Illustrated principally by Quentin Blake, with The Minpins illustrated by Patrick Benson and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator illustrated by Joseph Schindelman.

Sixteen volumes, octavo and quarto, in their original pictorial dust jackets. Some jackets neatly price-clipped; condition varies slightly across the set, with light rubbing, handling marks and minor age-related wear, but overall a very attractive and well-presented collection.

Roald Dahl created one of the most distinctive imaginative worlds in modern children's literature: a world of extraordinary children, repulsive adults, secret schemes, giants, witches, chocolate inventors, talking animals, airborne elevators and gleefully subversive verse. This collection gathers together many of the books through which that world became familiar to generations of readers, from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and Danny the Champion of the World to The BFG, The Witches and Matilda.

At the heart of the collection are several of Dahl's defining children's books. The BFG introduced Sophie and the dream-blowing giant in 1982; The Witches followed in 1983; and Matilda, published in 1988, became one of Dahl's final and best-loved major novels. Alongside these stand the comic inventiveness of The Twits and George's Marvellous Medicine, the warmth of Danny the Champion of the World, and the later charm of Esio Trot, The Vicar of Nibbleswicke and The Minpins. The Roald Dahl Museum records The Enormous Crocodile as the first Dahl book illustrated by Quentin Blake, marking the beginning of the visual partnership now inseparable from Dahl's children's writing.

The collection also extends beyond the novels. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More gathers stories for older children; Rhyme Stew presents Dahl's mischievous comic verse; while Boy and Going Solo form his autobiographical sequence, carrying the reader from childhood and schooldays into Africa and wartime flying. Together, the sixteen books offer a broader and more revealing portrait of Dahl than a selection of novels alone.

Books Included

• Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - 1972
• Danny the Champion of the World - 1975
• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More - 1977
• The Enormous Crocodile - 1978
• The Twits - 1980
• George's Marvellous Medicine - 1981
• The BFG - 1982
• The Witches - 1983
• Boy: Tales of Childhood - 1984
• The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me - 1985
• Going Solo - 1986
• Matilda - 1988
• Rhyme Stew - 1989
• Esio Trot - 1990
• The Vicar of Nibbleswicke - 1991
• The Minpins - 1991

The photographs illustrate the particular appeal of the set: the familiar jackets of Matilda and The BFG standing above a colourful gathering of Dahl's children's books, with the spines forming an immediately recognisable library of his later work. The presence of the original jackets is central to the collection's desirability, preserving the visual identity through which many of these titles were first encountered.

A delightful group of sixteen first editions by one of the most widely read children's authors of the twentieth century, including several of his most important and most sought-after titles. Offered together as a collection and not sold separately.