Roald Dahl letter to be sold
A letter written by the beloved children’s author Roald Dahl is set to go under the hammer.
The handwritten letter, dated August 2 1989, reveals his opinion of his own work and his determination to encourage children to read.
Librarian Christine Wotton said she wrote to Dahl “speculatively” when she was a 20-year-old student studying literature and linguistics at university in the late 1980s.
The item has been given a guide price of $915 to $1460 AUD by Hansons Auctioneers in Derbyshire.
The letter reads: “Never shelter children from the world .. the ‘content’ of any children’s book is of no importance other than that it enthrals the child - and thus it teaches or seduces him or her to ‘like’ books to become a fit reader - which is vital if that child is going to amount to anything in later life.
"The book-reading child will always outstrip the non-book-reading child in later life. There are very few messages in these books of mine.
"They are there simply to turn the child into a reader of books.
"Damn it all, they are mostly pure fantasy. Have you read the latest one, Matilda?
"It seems to have broken every sales record in the history of hardback publishing."
Explaining the story behind the letter, Wotton first “stumbled across Dahl’s address listed in the back of an old library book”.
“On a whim I asked him questions which intrigued me regarding his style and attitude towards children’s literature, never really dreaming of a response.”
The response she received was a “chatty double-sided, handwritten A4 reply” as well as a dissertation he lent to her “presumably written in his famous garden shed” and “discussing the importance of reading for children” with reference to his newly published book Matilda.
“As he indicated himself, it was unusual for him to reply to letters like mine, so I really struck lucky,” she added.
“With the happy-go-lucky optimism of youth, I don’t think I fully appreciated my good fortune.”
The letter will go to auction on June 15 in Hansons’ specialist library auction in Staffordshire.
Jim Spencer, head of books and works on paper at Hansons, said: “It’s unusual to see such conversational correspondence from a big name like this.”
As for why she has chosen to sell the letter, Wotton said: “I’ve enjoyed and treasured the letter for over 30 years and the time has come to share it, for others to read and enjoy his wise words which are dashed off in his wonderfully inimitable, flamboyant style.”