This article is about Roald Dahls novel. For the film adaptation directed and starring Danny DeVito, see Matilda film. Not to be confused with Mathilda novella. Matilda is a childrens novel written by British writer Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. It was published in by See more. In a small Buckinghamshire village forty minutes by bus away from Reading and miles from Aylesbury, Matilda Wormwood is born to Mr and Mrs Wormwood. She immediately shows amazing precocity, learning to speak at See more. Dahls initial draft for the novel portrayed Matilda as a wicked, irrational girl, her name being drawn from Hilaire Bellocs poem Matilda Who Told Such Dreadful Lies, who tortured See more. The mean and loathsome Mrs Pratchett, owner of the sweet shop Dahl frequented as a boy in Cardiff, inspired Dahls creation of Miss Trunchbull. See more. One of Miss Trunchbulls punishments is to force an overweight child, Bruce Bogtrotter, to eat an enormous chocolate cake, which makes him so full that he can