CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

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 lavishness of Charlie's ultimate reward, the novel was derided by Eleanor Cameron as "one of the most tasteless books ever written for children, " no better than a television show; Ursula Le Guin concurred, likening its effects to "a tiny psychological fugue, very like that provided by comic books." Children continue, lawlessly, to adore it. 9'' x 5.75''. Original blind-stamped red cloth boards with gilt-titled to spine. In original unclipped ($3.95) pictorial dust jacket. No ISBN number. Purple topstain. Gold endpapers. Black and white illustrations by Joseph Schindelman throughout. 6 line colophon. [12], 162 pages. Jacket with faint soil and toning to spine, touch of marginal toning. Book with some faint dustiness. Tight.