Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 1964 children's novel by the British writer Roald Dahl. It follows young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of an eccentric chocolatier named Willy Wonka. The story was originally inspired by Dahl's experience of chocolate companies during his schooldays at Repton School in Derbyshire. Cadbury would often send test packages to the schoolchildren in exchange for their opinions on the new products. At that time (around the 1920s), Cadbury and Rowntree's were England's two largest chocolate makers and they each often tried to steal trade secrets by sending spies, posing as employees, into the other's factory—inspiring Dahl's idea for the recipe-thieving spies (such as Wonka's rival Slugworth) depicted in the book. Because of this, both companies became highly protective of their chocolate-making processes. It was a combination of this secrecy and the elaborate, often gigantic, machines in the factory that inspired Dahl to write the story. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is frequently ranked among the most popular works in children's literature.
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