History of Matilda the Book

Matilda was originally published in 1988, two years before author Roald Dahl died, making it one of his last works. Prior to Matilda, Dahl had written numerous children’s books, including James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The BFG. While Matilda won the Children’s Book Award shortly after it was published, Dahl’s daughter Lucy said it was one of the most difficult books for him to write due to a genuine fear that books were going to go away.

Early drafts of Matilda were very different from the one that was made into a film in 1996 with Danny DeVito and Mara Wilson. Dahl wrote most of his books from his garden, writing in pencil on yellow legal paper while sitting in a small hut, what Lucy called his sacred place.

In a letter to Lucy, Dahl said he had to throw out three months of work as he tried to find the proper second half of the story to tie into his tale of a small girl who can move things with her mind and a terrible headmistress. In fact, an early draft of the story saw Matilda as wicked, who wound up using her powers to help her teacher solve financial problems by fixing a horse race. This early version also saw Dahl’s rebellious heroine die at the end of the book. All told, it took Dahl two years to write and rewrite Matilda.