Roald Dahl's Sketches for 'Boy' at Lyon & Turnbull
From the Dahl Boy archive
An archive featuring the progress of Roald Dahl’s 1984 memoir Boy: Tales of Childhood including 33 original ink sketches in black ballpoint pen by Dahl comes to auction on June 18 at Lyon & Turnbull's June's Books & Manuscripts auction.
The archive (estimate: £20,000 - £30,000) comes from the estate of the late Ian Craig (1944-2023) who was Dahl’s art director at his publisher Jonathan Cape where he also worked with Judith Kerr and Ralph Steadman.
Highlights include:
- Dahl’s original sketches in a manila envelope annotated by Ian Craig ‘Dahl’s Drawings & odds + sods’ including the dead mouse in gobstopper jar, a ‘closed’ sign for Mrs Pratchett’s sweetshop, Dahl’s broken fountain pen, and Dahl’s St Peter’s school toothbrush
- Ian Craig’s numerous sketches and finished designs for the illustrations in Boy, mainly in black ink, including the freight train, Dahl’s favourite sweets and several sketches not published (e.g. Dahl with a bandaged nose)
- two typed letters signed from Roald Dahl to Ian Craig, 1984, on the book’s title (‘I must thank you for coming up with the first sensible title for my book. “Boy” is fine. We all like it …’) and enclosing a photograph (‘Here’s the picture of the whole of St. Peter’s which I promised you. Captain Lancaster is the terrifying creature with the glasses and the finger moustache …’)
- publisher’s layouts and designs for photographic illustrations with the layout for endpapers, trial page-layouts, and 30 sheets of tracing paper marked up with typesetting instructions for photographic illustrations
- publisher’s paste-ups of Dahl’s childhood letters, photocopies of 25 letters and letter fragments, pasted onto black card mounts, each annotated with typesetting instructions on sheet of tracing tipped to mount
The sale also features papers from Kilravock Castle, near Nairn in the highlands of Scotland featuring five letters signed by Mary Queen of Scots (estimate: £10,000 - £15,000 each), with further letters and documents signed by James V, James VI and I, and Mary of Guise.
