Roald Dahl First Editions: How to Identify and Value Them

The first thing to know about Roald Dahl first editions is that his early children's books were American before they were British. Knopf in New York published James and the Giant Peach in 1961 and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 1964, and George Allen & Unwin's London editions followed in 1967. From The Twits in 1980 the order flips and Jonathan Cape's British editions come first. So the right question is not just "is it a first edition" but "is it the first edition of the right country".

Which country came first

Richard Walker's detailed collecting guide divides Dahl's career into three spans:

• 1942 to 1970: most books appeared first in the United States.
• 1970 to 1978: the order is sometimes unclear. Fantastic Mr Fox (1970) and Danny the Champion of the World (1975) may have been published at about the same time on both sides of the Atlantic.
• From 1979: the British edition clearly comes first, beginning with My Uncle Oswald.

A British first printing is a first edition of the British text and is collected in its own right, but it sells for less than the true first where the American book came earlier. Our guide to first edition vs first American edition explains the wider rule.

The early books

Year	Title	True first	First British edition
1943	The Gremlins	Random House, New York, Disney Studios pictures	Collins, about 1944, no jacket
1961	James and the Giant Peach	Knopf, Nancy Ekholm Burkert pictures	Allen & Unwin, 1967
1964	Charlie and the Chocolate Factory	Knopf, Joseph Schindelman pictures	Allen & Unwin, 1967, Faith Jaques pictures
1970	Fantastic Mr Fox	Knopf or Allen & Unwin, priority unsettled	Allen & Unwin, Donald Chaffin pictures
1972	Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator	Knopf	Allen & Unwin, 1973

The Gremlins (1943)

Dahl's first book was written for Walt Disney and illustrated by the Disney studio. The Random House first edition has a single statement of first publication and a jacket priced $1.00 on the front flap, which is the key point for the jacket. Wikipedia puts the American printing at 50,000 copies, yet jacketed copies are scarce: in 2007, 1stedition.net found only five on the market, priced from $2,200 to $6,000. Without its jacket the book is far cheaper. A jacketless copy sold with another Dahl book made £60 at Bellmans in 2024.

James and the Giant Peach (1961)

Walker gives these points for the first printing of the Knopf book:

• a five-line colophon at the back naming the Wolff bindery and the Glatfelter paper
• maroon boards and a top edge stained peach
• a jacket priced $3.95 with no SBN on the back panel

Later printings changed the board colour and, from about 1968, added an SBN to the jacket. Sales were slow at first, with about 2,600 copies sold in the first year, which is part of why a first printing is hard to find. The 1967 British edition, illustrated by Michel Simeon (some sources spell it Michael), has a single "First published" date and was issued without a jacket or price.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)

The Knopf first printing is the book to own. Walker and a 2021 Nate D. Sanders auction listing agree on these points:

• a six-line colophon at the back
• mustard endpapers and a chocolate-brown stained top edge
• red boards with the Borzoi dog stamped on the back board
• a jacket priced $3.95 with no SBN

One listing elsewhere describes a five-line colophon instead. We follow the two sources that agree, so treat any other description with care. A red-board copy with no colophon and slightly smaller boards is a book club copy. Knopf printed the book again in October and December 1964, so a copy dated 1964 is not automatically a first printing.

The first printing also shows the Oompa-Loompas as African pygmies, in words and pictures. After criticism, including from the NAACP, Knopf issued a revised edition in 1973 with the characters redrawn. That revised edition says so on the copyright page.

Sanders sold a first printing in a first-printing jacket for $2,500 in 2021. Allen & Unwin's British edition was issued in glazed pictorial boards without a jacket, as Jonkers notes. Dealers date it to 1967, although Wikipedia gives an earlier British date, so check the title page date of your own copy.

The Cape years

From the mid 1970s Jonathan Cape published Dahl in London, and from 1980 its editions come first. A Cape first printing says "First published" with one year and lists no later printings underneath. Later impressions add "Reprinted" lines. The jacket price is the second check:

Year	Title	Cape first edition	Jacket price
1975	Danny the Champion of the World	Jill Bennett pictures	£2.25
1980	The Twits	Quentin Blake pictures	£3.50
1981	George's Marvellous Medicine	Quentin Blake	£3.95
1982	The BFG	Quentin Blake	£6.50
1983	The Witches	Quentin Blake	£6.50
1988	Matilda	Quentin Blake	£8.50

Danny is the awkward one: Knopf published it in 1975 too, and Walker reports that the British proofs were made from the American ones, so neither edition has clear priority. He notes that early British copies are the scarcer of the two.

The Witches has a useful jacket point: on the first-state jacket there is no Quentin Blake copyright credit at the foot of the rear flap. The second printing's jacket adds one.

For The BFG and The Witches, Farrar, Straus and Giroux in New York also issued 300 copies signed by Dahl and Blake, in a slipcase. One of the signed BFGs made £3,570 at Bonhams in 2023, far above a trade first.

Quentin Blake and later illustrators

Quentin Blake illustrated every Cape first from The Twits (1980) in the table above. He drew the earlier books only for new Viking editions in 1995, as did Michael Foreman (Charlie, 1985) and Emma Chichester Clark (James, 1990). Blake illustrations on Charlie or James therefore always mean a later edition. They are lovely books, but they are not first editions of those titles.

What drives value

• The right edition. A Knopf first of Charlie is worth many times a 1967 British first, and both are worth far more than later printings.
• The jacket. For the Knopf and Cape books the jacket is a large part of the value, and an unclipped jacket with the right first-state price matters. The early Allen & Unwin books never had one, so do not mark them down for its absence.
• Condition. These were children's books, read hard. Bright, clean copies without names or crayon are scarce. See book condition grading.
• Signatures. Signed copies carry a premium, as the Bonhams BFG shows. See signed and inscribed books.

Check your copy

1. Find the publisher and place on the title page: New York (Knopf, Random House, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Viking) or London (Allen & Unwin, Cape).
2. Read the copyright page. On a British book, look for a single "First published" year with nothing listed below it.
3. On a Knopf Charlie or James, count the lines in the colophon at the back and check the board colour.
4. Check the jacket price on the front flap against the tables above, and look at whether it has been clipped.
5. Note the illustrator. Blake pictures on James, Charlie or Fantastic Mr Fox mean a later edition.
6. Look your book up on its MyVolumes page, use Is my book valuable?, or scan the barcode of a later copy to record it in your collection.