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Done - I've actually moved the "popular" to refer to the literature rather than Dahl himself, as him being popular is likely not the intended meaning. Tollens (talk) 05:25, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If anyone has any info on the relative popularity of the 2023 edited versions vs "classic" versions, I think this would be interesting info to add. 1.132.106.132 (talk) 10:11, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! I noted an incorrect entry against Roald Dahl's biography, notably his first published piece of writing. The current entry states:
Dahl's first published work, inspired by a meeting with C. S. Forester, was "A Piece of Cake", on 1 August 1942. The story, about his wartime adventures, was bought by The Saturday Evening Post for US$1,000 (equivalent to $19,000 in 2023) and published under the title "Shot Down Over Libya".
HOWEVER, I have just recently re-read Dahl's autobiographies Boy and Going Solo. In Going Solo he recounts a story "Simba", in which one of their cooks in Africa is attacked by a lion and kidnapped, them chasing and rescuing the woman literally from the lion's jaws. He then wrote an article on this. I quote:
"The story of this strange happening with the lion spread all over East Africa and it became a bit of a legend. And when I got back to Dar es Salaam about two weeks later, there was a letter wating for me from the Eat African Standard (I think it was called) up in Nairobi asking if I would write my own eye-witness description of the incident. This I did and in time I received a cheque for five pounds from the newspaper for my first published work."
From: Roald Dahl, 'Boy' and 'Going Solo', Puffin Publishing1984 (2008 edition), from the chapter 'Simba' (p224)