Books

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. First issue. Near fine in near fine jacket.. First edition, in the first issue dust jacket, of the great chocolatier fantasy of desire fulfilled, a beautiful copy. Dahl's Dickensian tale of a good-hearted waif rescued from poverty by literature's most stylish factory owner, drawing powerfully on the author's remembered childhood miseries and later post-war deprivation. Charlie's wish for a Golden Ticket, more than the uncomplicated greed animating the book's less virtuous children, is an unfathomable longing for sweetness, for a taste of wonder in a grey and oppressive world. Meanwhile, Wonka's chaotic energy drives the story to its greatest heights. As the walled chocolate garden's grotesqueries reward a child-reader's basest narrative instincts, each unworthy child is punished according to his or her character and just desserts, in sequences as merciless as a medieval morality play. For these disquieting episodes, and for the sheer material…

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a delightful novel by Roald Dahl that tells the story of a poor boy named Charlie Bucket who finds a golden ticket in a chocolate bar, granting him a tour of Willy Wonka's mysterious and magical chocolate factory.