Roald Dahl

A signed first edition of one of Dahl's best children's books: characteristically bizarre, wicked and heartwarming.

• Roald Dahl (English).
• Illustrated by Nancy Ekholm Burkert.
• New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961.
• Illustrated by Burkert throughout in full color, red and black, and black and white.
• Signed by Dahl in blue ink on front endpaper.
• Bound in the original full blind-stamped red cloth, gilt-lettered spine, in original unclipped pictorial dust jacket, with green endpapers and yellow topstain.

When Dahl published his first book for children with Disney, Gremlins (1943), he believed it was a happy one-off and focused instead on developing his career as a writer for adults. Nearly two decades later, Dahl published James and the Giant Peach as his second children's book, finally moving into the field where his writing would develop into a powerful legacy. The darkness of Dahl's worlds for children have often been objected to by adults—this book regularly features on lists of banned or challenged books in American libraries—but for many children, it is the spark of fantasy within bleak settings that appeals to the imagination without becoming saccharine: Tim Burton famously told Dahl's widow he wanted to turn James and the Giant Peach into a film because "it's the only book that ever gave me any hope when I was a child."