Dahl, Roald (1916-1990)
Production archive for the publication of Boy, including original sketches by Dahl
Estimate: £20,000 - £30,000
Auction: 18 June 2025 from 10:00 BST
Description
1. Roald Dahl’s original sketches for illustrations in Boy, some 33 in total, all in black ballpoint pen on paper sheets of various dimensions, housed in manila envelope annotated by Ian Craig ‘Dahl’s Drawings & odds + sods’, comprising:
i) Group of 14 sketches, each on a separate sheet, mainly 15 x 10cm: Harald Dahl’s fork and carry-case, freight train, dead mouse in gobstopper jar, ‘closed’ sign for Mrs Pratchett’s sweetshop, ‘wanted for murder’ poster, Bestepapa’s pipe (on larger irregularly-cut sheet), Norwegian goat’s head, Norwegian doctor’s Bunsen burner, Dahl’s broken fountain pen, Dahl in his Repton uniform (versions of all these reproduced in Boy respectively at pp. 14, 16, 37, 38, 41, 54, 62, 65, 104, 126), and 5 sketches apparently not published in (teacup, icicle-encrusted toilet bowl, snake, boy touching his toes, and one unidentifiable object resembling a chequerboard on a table);
ii) ‘Liquorice bootlaces’, with Dahl’s autograph caption, 17 x 19.5cm, sketch and text traced in black ink by Ian Craig on sheet of tracing paper tipped along top edge and annotated by Craig with index number and page reference (Boy p. 30);
iii) ‘The cane’, ‘The cane again’, ‘and again’, 3 sketches on 1 sheet, with Dahl’s autograph captions, 15 x 14.5cm, small tear to top right corner (Boy pp. 45, 109, 130);
iv) Dr Dunbar’s bottle of pills, and another bottle (possibly Dr Dunbar’s chloroform), 2 sketches on 1 sheet, 10 x 15cm (Boy p. 91, possibly p. 97);
v) Dahl’s St Peter’s toothbrush, 10 x 15cm, with Ian Craig’s revised version below on same sheet (Boy p. 88);
vi) Dead mouse in gobstopper jar, 2 versions of the same sketch, each on separate sheet, 13 x 11cm and 12 x 14cm, taped together at corner, one sheet unevenly torn along edges (Boy p. 37);
vii) Dahl’s St Peter’s tuck-box, and contents of tuck-box, 2 sketches each on separate sheet, both 15 x 10cm, taped together at left-hand edge (Boy pp. 70 and 71, the contents sketch showing several items not in the published version, e.g. toy soldiers, banana);
viii) Dead mouse (chapter headpiece for ‘The Great Mouse Plot’), 2 versions of the same sketch, each on separate sheet, 9 x 8cm and 7 x 13cm, taped together at corner, one sheet unevenly torn along edges (Boy p. 35);
ix) Gobstopper, sherbet suckers, liquorice bootlaces, tricycle, 4 sketches, each on separate sheet (various dimensions, approx. 7 x 9.5cm to 11 x 20.5cm), gobstopper and sherbet suckers both with Dahl’s autograph captions, tricycle sketch remaining taped at one corner to A4 sheet of rough ink sketches by Ian Craig (one captioned ‘Mama and Papa admiring the view’ in an imitation of Dahl’s handwriting), the remaining 3 sketches taped together but now detached from Craig’s sheet (adhesive residue visible) (Boy pp. 29 and 24);
x) Outhouse and icicle-encrusted toilet bowl, 2 sketches on 1 sheet, 16.5 x 10cm, creased, taped at one corner to A4 sheet containing 7 sketches of Mrs Pratchett and the gobstopper jar by Ian Craig.
2. Ian Craig’s sketches and finished designs for the illustrations in Boy, mainly in black ink, comprising numerous discrete drawings on 28 sheets (nearly all A4, i.e. 29.5 x 21cm), 15 of which containing the final versions of the illustrations before typesetting, being identical to the printed illustrations in the published work and marked up with page numbers and typesetting instructions (reduction, magnification and re-orientation) on sheet of tracing paper tipped to original sheet or on original sheet itself (tracing paper detached in most cases), these comprising the freight train (Boy p. 16), Dahl’s favourite sweets (p. 29), tonsil ticklers and pear drops (p. 32), dead mouse (chapter headpiece for ‘The Great Mouse Plot’, p. 35), dead mouse in gobstopper jar (p. 37), ‘Closed’ sign for Mrs Pratchett’s shop (p. 38, on a small sheet, 8 x 17.5cm only), Mrs Pratchett’s revenge (p. 46), Norwegian toilet (p. 59), Norwegian goats (p. 62), Norwegian doctor’s Bunsen burner (p. 65), Dahl’s tuckbox and contents (pp. 70 and 71, the drawings on one sheet), Dahl’s toothbrush (p. 88), Captain Hardcastle (p. 99), Dahl’s broken fountain pen (p. 104), sports gear (chapter headpiece for ‘Boazers’, p. 128). The remaining 13 sheets with numerous sketches, from rough to fair copies, mostly recognisable versions of the published illustrations in Boy (e.g. sweets, Dahl’s toothbrush, the Bunsen burner, Mrs Pratchett, the toilet at Repton, Dahl in Repton uniform), but including several sketches not published (e.g. Dahl with a bandaged nose).
3. Two typed letters signed from Roald Dahl to Ian Craig, 1984, on the book’s title (‘I must thank you for coming up with the first sensible title for my book. “Boy” is fine. We all like it …’) and enclosing a photograph (‘Here’s the picture of the whole of St. Peter’s which I promised you. Captain Lancaster is the terrifying creature with the glasses and the finger moustache …’).
4. Publisher’s layouts and designs for photographic illustrations, comprising: layout for endpapers (14 pencil sketches from photographs pasted onto A5 sheet of thin paper, with cuttings of photocopied manuscript captions pasted below each image, images numbered and the sheet annotated in blue pencil, together with 3 A4 sheets of tracing paper with manuscript captions only, apparently in imitation of Dahl’s hand, in black ink with annotations in blue pencil, one sheet with section cut away); group of trial page-layouts (4 single A4 sheets each stapled to single A5 sheet, and one ‘booklet’ of 4 A4 sheets stapled together, including photocopies of photographs and Dahl’s childhood letters, and original pencil sketches and copies of the same, annotated in ink and pencil by publisher); annotated paste-ups for the ‘Wanted for Murder’ poster and the Dahl family motorcar illustrations (pp. 41 and 92); approx. 30 sheets of tracing paper marked up with typesetting instructions for photographic illustrations, often with outline sketches of the relevant photographs).
5. Publisher’s paste-ups of Dahl’s childhood letters, comprising photocopies of 25 letters and letter fragments, pasted onto black card mounts, each annotated with typesetting instructions on sheet of tracing tipped to mount (tracing paper detached in several instances). Together with an envelope of photocopied letters and typed extracts annotated by publisher, in envelope annotated by Craig (‘Xeroxes of letters & typed extracts’).
6. Folder of miscellaneous material, including typed memos, editorial checklist, specimen pages, annotated designs for page-layouts (some apparently relating to the US edition), and similar
Provenance
Estate of the late Ian Craig.
Footnote
'Throughout my young days at school and just afterwards a number of things happened to me that I have never forgotten. None of these things is important, but each of them made such a tremendous impression on me that I have never been able to get them out of my mind. Each of them, even after a lapse of fifty and sometimes sixty years, has remained seared on my memory. I didn’t have to search for any of them. All I had to do was skim them off the top of my consciousness and write them down’.
Roald Dahl, Boy: Tales of Childhood, 1984
A unique and extensive publisher’s archive illuminating the origins of one of Roald Dahl’s best-loved works and including numerous original drawings by Dahl, one of the few such collections of material conceivably in existence, Boy being the only work for which he attempted to draw his own illustrations.
Original autograph material by Dahl is rare in any form: a single leaf from his final draft of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory appeared at a London auction in 2023 (selling for over £13,000 including premium). The original artwork for two of Dahl’s other books, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1973) and Danny the Champion of the World (1975), illustrated by Faith Jaques and Jill Bennett respectively, are both known to have appeared on the market in recent years.
Ian Craig (1944-2023) grew up in Ipswich and studied at Edinburgh College of Art under Sir William Gillies RSA, working as a designer at the now defunct publisher Studio Vista before joining Jonathan Cape as art director in 1973. Roald Dahl’s first book with Cape following his departure from George Allen & Unwin was Danny the Champion of the World; The Enormous Crocodile, which appeared in 1978, was his first to be illustrated by Quentin Blake. As Blake was unavailable when Boy was in production, Dahl himself started producing sketches based on his recollections before passing them to Ian Craig, who used Dahl’s sketches and text as prompts for his own versions in a distinctively Blakean style, which, as this archive demonstrates, are the illustrations seen in the published book.
Craig was one of the leading figures in children’s books in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, noted for his work with authors and artists including Judith Kerr, Ralph Steadman and John Burningham. He oversaw the production of every book in Dahl’s run of instant classics which Cape published during the 1980s, including The Twits, George’s Marvellous Medicine, and Matilda, their association continuing even after Dahl’s death with Craig’s work on The Minpins, published posthumously in 1991 (see lot 99).
Reflecting on her husband’s career and his association with Roald Dahl, Kate Craig, Ian’s wife and colleague at Jonathan Cape, recalls:
‘The publication of Boy was on a very tight publication schedule and, as Quentin Blake was away on holiday, Ian asked Dahl if he could help with the illustrations. Dahl ended up producing a variety of sketches which Ian used as inspiration for his own drawings. Ian never got paid for the illustrations, but Dahl did give him a blue cashmere cardigan, which he treasured, to thank him for his work.'
Never before offered for sale, this collection is a major addition to the corpus of original material relating to the career of one of the most celebrated children’s authors in not only English but all literature: ‘The pied piper and lord of misrule [and] topsy-turvydom was the most popular children's writer of his or any age. Generations of children grew up with Dahl's books, and were able to enjoy reading them to their own children. They were translated into innumerable languages, filmed, and televised … He adored children, and they loved the grotesque worlds he created for them’ (Philip Howard in ODNB).