page_title: Roald Dahl bibliography
section_title: Short story collections
hierarchical_section_title: Roald Dahl bibliography / Short story collections
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal
context_page_description: Roald Dahl was a British author and scriptwriter, and "the most popular writer of children's books since Enid Blyton", according to Philip Howard, the literary editor of The Times. He was raised by his Norwegian mother, who took him on annual trips to Norway, where she told him the stories of trolls and witches present in the dark Scandinavian fables. Dahl was influenced by the stories, and returned to many of the themes in his children's books. His mother also nurtured a passion in the young Dahl for reading and literature.
  During the Second World War Dahl was a pilot in the Royal Air Force until he crashed in the Libyan desert; the subsequent injuries left him unfit to fly. He was posted to Washington as an assistant air attaché, ostensibly a diplomatic post, but which also included espionage and propaganda work. In 1942 the writer C. S. Forester asked him to provide details of his experiences in North Africa which Forester hoped to use in an article in The Saturday Evening Post. Instead of the notes which Forester expected, Dahl sent a finished story for which he was paid $900.
caption: Dahl with his first wife Patricia Neal in 1954
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