Roald Dahl was one of the greatest story-tellers of all time. He was born in Llanduff, South Wales, of Norwegian parents, in 1916, and educated in English boarding-schools. Then, in search of adventure, the young Dahl took a job with Shell Oil in Africa. When World War II broke out he joined the RAF as a fighter pilot, receiving terrible injuries and almost dying in a plane crash in 1942.
It was following this "monumental bash on the head" and a meeting with C. S. Forester (author of the famous Captain Horatio Hornblower stories) that Roald Dahl's writing career began, with articles for magazines such as The New Yorker. He wrote successful novellas and short stories for adults, such as Tales of the Unexpected, before concentrating on his marvelous children's stories. The first of these, James and the Giant Peach, in 1960, was followed by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and an unbroken string of hugely successful, best-selling titles.
Roald Dahl worked from a tiny hut in the pale orchard of the Georgian house in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire which he shared with his wife, Liccy. He was always brimming with new ideas and his many books continue to bring enormous enjoyment to millions of children and their parents throughout the world.
Roald Dahl died on November 23, 1990.
Roald Dahl described his life in two books, "Boy" and "Going Solo". The first volume deals with his childhood, the second one with his life after school.
His parents were from Norway, but he was born in Wales, 1916. The family used to spend the summer holidays on a little Norwegian island, swimming, fishing and going by boat. When Roald was four years old, his father died, so his mother had to organise the trip alone for herself and her six children.
At school, he was always homesick. At St. Peter's Prep School, all the letters home were controlled by the headmaster, and afterwards at Repton Public School, he had to wear a horrible school uniform [with braces, waist coat, hat and lots of buttons, all black]. The younger boys were often punished by the headmaster and the older boys called prefects. Roald lays much emphasis on describing the school-beatups in his book. You could get beaten for small mistakes like leaving a football sock on the floor, for burning the prefect's toast at teatime or for forgetting to change into house-shoes at six o'clock.
He would make training films for people from standard oil and propaganda posters during the war because he was too old for the draft. He also wrote a lot of books he has written and published over 60 books. Most of those books were translated in to many different languages and the cat in the hat was translated in to over 15 different languages most of his books that he wrote got rejected many times by many publishers and that is why he started his own publishing company to publish his own books and to publish other childrens v books to help people publish their books.
One of the best, most valuable aspects of reading multiple works by the same author is getting to know the author as a person. People don't identify with Gregor Samsa; they identify with Kafka. Witness the love exhibited by the many fans of Hemingway, a love for both the texts and the drama of the man. It's like that for me with Kurt Vonnegut, but it strikes me that he pulls it off in an entirely different way.
Dr. Seuss was born in Springfield, MA on March 2, 1904 as Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss At Work). He attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He did his undergraduate work at Dartmouth; postgraduate, Oxford and Sorbonne( SV DO or C; S, DO or C) (Geisel, Theodor Seuss). Seuss became the editor-in-chief for Dartmouth’s Jack-o-lantern, the college’s humor magazine. It was now when he started signing his works with the pseudonym, Dr. Seuss. After his studies became too much to handle, he quit college and toured around Europe. When he returned home he began pursuing a career in cartooning (All About Dr. Seuss). He illustrated a collection of children’s saying called Boners. These sayings were not a huge success. He pushed for his original book, To Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street to be published seventeen times.
Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet Transylvania on September 30, 1928. Prior to being taken under the Nazi 's rule, he decided to pursue Religious studies,as his father did. He grew up with his parents and three sisters. in the year 1944, when Elie was 15 years old,
Aunt Neva gave the boy his appreciation of fantasy, by reading him the Oz books,
Levi, Claudia. "Roald Dahl: Overview." Reference Guide to Short Fiction. Ed. Noelle Watson. Detroit: St. James Press, 1994. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
Whalley, J. (2009) ‘Texts and Pictures: A History’ in Montgomery H and Watson N (eds), Children’s Literature Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan in association with Open University, pp.299-310
Stephen King was born in Maine in 1947. His father abandoned him when he was 2 years old. His mother and brother was all he ever knew. Him and his brother were raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana where his father lived at the time. He was also raised in Connecticut too. His mother decided to move them back to Maine for their own good. There he got a job at Kitchens of Pineland. A kitchen of Pineland was by a mentally challenged hospital. He went to a Durham grammar school then attended Libson High School. In 1966, He graduated. At University of Maine of Orana, he was a sophomore that wrote for The Maine Campus, the school’s newspaper. He became a member of the Student Senate in Student politician. He also attended an Anti-war movement. In 1970, he graduated. His examination was a 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums. From his examinations, he got a diploma to be a full time teacher.
He originally pursued a doctor career, however, he was almost blind because of an eye disease as a teenage. After graduating from Oxford in 1916, he became a writer and started to write satirical pieces about the British upper class. Relying on his skill of writing he had some audience and a literary name. Much of his work deals with the conflict between the interests of the individual and society, often focusing on the problem of self-realization within the context of social responsibility. This finally reached down to his book Brave New World.
John enjoyed literature from an early age on. His mother read him the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Robert Louis Stevenson, and the stories of King Arthur.
Charles Dickens, an English writer and social critic, lived in England from 1812 to 1870 (Cody). Dickens usually critiques topics important to him or those that have affected him throughout his life. He grew up poor and was forced to work at an early age when his father was thrown into debtors prison (Cody). As he became a popular and widely known author he was an outspoken activist for the betterment of poor people’s lives (Davis). He wrote A Tale of Two Cities during the 1850s and published the book in 185...
In September of 1940, a debonairly young RAF pilot named Roald Dahl crashed in the Western Desert of North Africa. From the crash, Dahl is rewarded with severe injuries to the head, nose and back. In 1942, Dahl, was commanded to take a job working at the British Embassy in Washington where he worked as an assistant air attaché. He was a 26 year old and he desperately wanted to be in the middle of the battle, where he could shoot other planes and enemy soldiers from his Gladiator plane. He didn’t want to be shoved into an office where he had to sit at a desk for 11 hours. Soon after his arrival in the United States Capitol, Dahl was “"caught up in the complex web of intrigue masterminded by [William] Stephenson, the legendary Canadian spymaster, who outmaneuvered the FBI and State Department and managed to create an elaborate clandestine organization whose purpose was to weaken the isolationist forces in America and influence U.S. policy in favor of Britain. Tall, handsome, and intelligent, Dahl had all the makings of an ideal operative. A courageous officer wounded in battle, smashing looking in his dress uniform, he was everything England could have asked for as a romantic representative of their imperiled island. He was also arrogant, idiosyncratic, and incorrigible, and probably the last person anyone would have considered reliable enough to be trusted with anything secret. Above all, however, Dahl was a survivor. When he got into trouble, he was shrewd enough to make himself useful to British intelligence, providing them with gossipy items that proved he had a nose for scandal and the writer's ear for damning detail. Already attached to the British air mi...
... (eds), Children’s Literature Classic Text and Contemporary Trends, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan in association with Open University
Tolkien was born in South Africa and after both his parents died when Tolkien was at a young age he moved in with relatives to England. This is where all his writing started. He went to college and studied Anglo Saxon and classic literature. He even enlisted in the army, which was very common for this time, and all this time at war he never stopped writing. He finally got released from the army because of an illness. All these events in his life have majorly influenced his writing style.
Roald Dahl was a famous British Writer. He was born in Llandeff, Wales on September 13th 1916. His parents, Harold and Sofie, came from Norway. He had four sisters, Astri, Affhild, Else and Astra, His father died when Roald was only four years old. Roald attended Repton, a private school in Derbyshire. He did not enjoy his school years, “I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed, literally, to wound other boys and sometimes quite severely. I couldn’t get over it. I never got over it…” These experiences inspired him to write stories in which children fight against cruel adults and authorities.