The Bookseller (short story)

1987 short story by Roald Dahl

For the British magazine, see The Bookseller (magazine).

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "The Bookseller" short story – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

"The Bookseller"

Short story by Roald Dahl
Country| United Kingdom
Language| English
Genre(s)| Dark comedy, Satire
Publication
Published in| January 1987
Publisher| Playboy
Media type| Print

"The Bookseller" is a short story by British writer Roald Dahl. It was first published in the January 1987 issue of Playboy.

## Plot

[edit]

London bookseller William Buggage and his assistant, Miss Tottle, have been swindling the widows of prominent men by sending fake invoices for pornographic literature supposedly purchased by their recently deceased husbands. The embarrassed widows pay the bill to avoid a public scandal. Buggage is foiled when one of his intended victims points out that her late husband was blind.

## Controversy

[edit]

Dahl's biographer, Jeremy Treglown, states that Dahl took the plot of "The Bookseller" from "Clerical Error" (also published as "Foot In It"), a 1935 short story by James Gould Cozzens. Some readers wrote to Playboy drawing attention to the apparent plagiarism, but these letters were not published.[1] Cozzens's original story had been adapted for television in a 1983 episode of Tales of the Unexpected,[2] a series with which Dahl was closely associated.

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Treglown, Jeremy (1994). Roald Dahl: A Biography. New York: Farrar.
2. ^ "Tales of the Unexpected: Clerical Error (1983)". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 18 January 2015.

## External links

[edit]

* "The Bookseller" title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database