Books

First edition, second impression, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper ("To Olivia, with love, Roald Dahl, 6/10/85"). The Witches was published in a tumultuous year for Dahl and is a difficult book to find inscribed. Winner of the Whitbread Award for Children's Novel in 1983, the book was adapted into a stage play, a two-part radio dramatization for the BBC, a 1990 movie directed by Nicolas Roeg which starred Anjelica Huston and Rowan Atkinson, and an opera by Marcus Paus and Ole Paus. Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. With numerous in-text and full-page illustrations by Quentin Blake. Foot of spine very slightly bumped, small damp stain to fore edge; extremities of unclipped jacket a little rubbed with very minor closed tear to foot of spine, some offsetting from inscription: a very good copy in like jacket.

The Witches is a dark fantasy children's novel by the British writer Roald Dahl. The story is set partly in Norway and partly in the United Kingdom, and features the influence of Scandinavian folklore on the plot and characters.