British writer, famous for his ingenious short stories and irreverent children's books. Dahl's taste for cruelty, rudeness to adults, and the comic grotesque fascinated young readers, but upset many adult critics. Several of Dahl's has been made into screenplays for television. In his stories Dahl respected above all the principle of fair play. Uncle Oswald, a seducer from 'The Visitor', gets seduced. In 'Parson's Pleasure' an antique dealer tastes his own medicine and in 'Lamb to the Slaughter' the evidence of a murder, a frozen leg of lamb, is eaten by the unwitting officers. Puns, word coinages, and neologism are more often used in the children's stories, whereas in adult fiction the emphasis is on imaginative, freewheeling plots. Dahl's stories have unexpected endings and strange, menacing atmospheres.

"Good ghost stories, like good children's books, are damnably difficult to write. I am a short story writer myself, and although I have been doing it for forty-five years and have always longed to write just one decent ghost story, I have never succeeded in bringing it off. Heaven knows, I have tried. Once I thought I had done it. It was with a story that is now called 'The Landlady'. But when it was finished and I examined it carefully, I knew it wasn't good enough. I hadn't brought it off. I simply hadn't got the secret. So finally I altered the ending and made it into a non-ghost story."
(from Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories, 1983).

Author of the following books, stories and novels : The Gremlins, The Honeys, The Lightning Bug, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, The Enormous Crocodile, The Best of Roald Dahl, James and The Giant Peach, Matilda, The Vicar of Nibbleswick, plus many, many others.
 

Roald Dahl : For further reading: Roald Dahl by Chris Dowling (1983); Roald Dahl by Alan Warren (1988); St James Guide to Young Adult Writers, ed. by Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast (1999).