Boy (book)
| Boy: Tales of Childhood' | |
|---|---|
 1st edition |
|
| Author(s) | Roald Dahl |
| Illustrator | Quentin Blake |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Autobiography |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape (UK) |
| Publication date | 1984 |
| Pages | 160 |
| ISBN | 978-0-224-02985-8 |
Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984) is the first autobiographical book by British writer Roald Dahl. It describes his life from birth until leaving school, focusing on living conditions in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, the public school system at the time, and how his childhood experiences led him to writing as a career. It ends with his first job, working for Royal Dutch Shell. His autobiography continues in the book Going Solo.
Contents |
[edit] Key points in the story
[edit] Dahl's ancestry
Roald Dahl's father Harald and mother Sofie Magdalene were Norwegians who lived in Cardiff, Wales. Harald and his brother Oscar split up and went their separate ways, Oscar going to La Rochelle. Harald had lost an arm from complications after fracturing it: a doctor was summoned, but was drunk on arrival and mistook the injury for a dislocated shoulder. His attempt to relocate the shoulder caused further damage to the fractured arm, necessitating its amputation.
Harald Dahl had two children by his first wife, Marie, who died shortly after the birth of their second child. He then married Sophie Magdalene Hesselberg, Roald's mother. Harald was more than twenty years older than Sophie; he was born in 1863 and she was born in 1885. By the time Roald was born in 1916, his father was 53 years old.
[edit] Roald's family danger
Roald's older sister Astri (his mother's first child) died of appendicitis in 1920 at the age of seven.
[edit] Kindergarten
Roald started at the Elmtree House kindergarten when he was six years old. He was there for a year, but has few memories of his time there.
[edit] Sweets
Roald writes about different confectionery, his love of sweets, his fascination with the local sweet shop and in particular about the free samples of Cadbury chocolate bars given to him and his schoolmates for evaluation when he was a student at Repton. Young Dahl dreamed of working as an inventor for Cadbury, an idea he has said later inspired Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
[edit] Great mouse plot of 1924
From the age of seven, Roald attended Llandaff Cathedral School in Cardiff. He and his friends had a grudge against the local sweet-shop owner, Mrs. Pratchett, a sour, elderly widow who gave no thought to hygiene. They played a prank on her by placing a dead mouse in a gobstopper jar while his friend Thwaites distracted her by buying sweets. They were caned by the headmaster as a punishment, while Mrs. Pratchett watched laughing.
[edit] St Peter's School, Weston-super-Mare
Roald attended St Peter's School, a boarding school in Weston-super-Mare, from 1925, when he was nine, to 1929. He describes having received six strokes of the cane after being wrongly accused of cheating at his homework. Many of the events he describes involved the matron. She once sprinkled soap shavings into the mouth of a boy who was snoring. She sent a six-year-old boy who allegedly threw a sponge across the dormitory to the headmaster in his pyjamas and dressing gown; the boy received six strokes of the cane. Wragg, a boy in Roald's dormitory sprinkled sugar over the corridor floor and the matron walked through it. When the boy's friends refused to turn him in, the whole school was punished when the headmaster confiscated food parcels the pupils had received from their families. And finally he returns with his mother at Christmas.
[edit] Goat's tobacco
On one of Roald's visits to his grandparents in Norway, he placed goat droppings in the tobacco pipe of his elder sister's fiancé, who suffered a coughing fit while smoking it. One of Roald's sisters let slip what had happened.
[edit] Repton
At the age of thirteen, in 1929, Roald moved to Repton School in Derbyshire. He had been given a choice between Repton and Marlborough and chosen Repton because its name was easier to pronounce. He tells of the fagging duties he had to perform for "Boazers" (prefects), such as warming up a Boazer's toilet seat in winter by sitting on it. He states that he read entire works of Charles Dickens while sitting on the toilet seat.
Dahl describes an occasion when his friend received ten strokes of the cane from the headmaster as punishment for misbehaviour. According to Dahl, this headmaster was Geoffrey Francis Fisher, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury and crowned the Queen in 1953. However, according to Dahl's biographer Jeremy Treglown, Dahl's memory was in error: the beating took place in May 1933, a year after Fisher had left Repton. The headmaster concerned was in fact J.T. Christie, Fisher's successor.[1]
[edit] A drive in the motorcar
When Dahl was nine, his ancient half-sister (aged twenty-one) took him for a drive in their first car and they were involved in a road accident that nearly severed Dahl's nose. He was taken to the family doctor, who put sticking plasters on his nose and sent him home, where it was sewn back on.
[edit] Editions
- ISBN 0-14-131140-1 (paperback, 2004)
- ISBN 0-14-130305-0 (paperback, 2001)
- ISBN 0-14-015682-8 (paperback, 1992)
- ISBN 0-14-008917-9 (paperback, 1986)
- ISBN 0-435-12300-9 (hardcover, 1986)
[edit] Notes
- ^ Treglown, Jeremy. Roald Dahl: a Biography. pp. 21. ISBN 978-0571165735.
