The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka.

[1] The story was originally inspired by Roald Dahl's experience of chocolate companies during his schooldays at Repton School in Derbyshire.

One day, Charlie's bedridden Grandpa Joe tells him about Willy Wonka, the factory's eccentric owner, and all of his fantastical candies.

The first four tickets are found by gluttonous Augustus Gloop, spoiled Veruca Salt, compulsive gum-chewer Violet Beauregarde, and television addict Mike Teavee.

On the day of the tour, Wonka welcomes the five children and their parents inside the factory, a wonderland of confectionery creations that defy logic.

During the tour, the other children besides Charlie give in to their impulses and are ejected from the tour in darkly comical ways: Augustus falls into the Chocolate River and is sucked up a pipe, Violet turns blue and inflates into a giant human blueberry after chewing an experimental stick of three-course dinner gum ending with a blueberry pie flavor, Veruca and her parents fall down a garbage chute after the former tries to capture one of the nut-testing squirrels, and Mike is shrunk down to the size of a chocolate bar after misusing a machine that sends chocolate by television despite Wonka's warnings.

Wonka explains that the whole tour was designed to help him find a worthy heir to his business, and Charlie was the only child whose inherent genuineness passed the test.

[10] In 2023, publisher Puffin made more than eighty additional changes to the original text of the book, such as: removing every occurrence of the word fat (including referring to Augustus Gloop as "enormous" rather than "enormously fat" and greatly changing the words of his song); removing most references to the Oompa-Loompa's diminutive size and physical appearance and omitting descriptions of them living in trees and wearing deerskins and leaves; removing or changing the words mad, crazy, and queer; omitting many references to Mike Teavee's toy guns; and removing references to corporal punishment (such as changing "She needs a really good spanking" to "She needs a really good talking to" and "She wants a good kick in the pants" to "She needs to learn some manners").

In 2005, The Times reprinted "Spotty Powder" as a "lost" chapter, saying that it had been found in Dahl's desk, written backwards in mirror writing (the same way that Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his journals).

"[21][25] This early draft poem was slightly rewritten as an Oompa-Loompa song in the lost chapter, which now puts her in the "Spotty-Powder mixer" and instead of being "crunchy and ... good [peanut brittle]" she is now "useful [for truancy] and ...

The Guardian reported the now-eliminated passage was "deemed too wild, subversive and insufficiently moral for the tender minds of British children almost 50 years ago.

"[22] The chapter dates back to an early draft with ten golden tickets, including one each for Miranda Grope and Augustus Pottle, who fell into the chocolate river prior to the events of "Fudge Mountain".

This is met with predictable disbelief from Clarence Crump, Bertie Upside, and Terence Roper, who proceed to eat at least 100 warming candies each, resulting in profuse perspiration.

[31] A fan of the book since childhood, film director Tim Burton wrote: "I responded to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because it respected the fact that children can be adults.

[34] A 2012 survey by the University of Worcester determined that it was one of the most common books that UK adults had read as children, after Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Wind in the Willows.

[43] Although the book has always been popular and considered a children's classic by many literary critics, a number of prominent individuals have spoken unfavourably of the novel over the years.

[44] Children's novelist and literary historian John Rowe Townsend has described the book as "fantasy of an almost literally nauseating kind" and accused it of "astonishing insensitivity" regarding the original portrayal of the Oompa-Loompas as African black pygmies, although Dahl did revise this in later editions.

[45] Another novelist, Eleanor Cameron, compared the book to the sweets that form its subject matter, commenting that it is "delectable and soothing while we are undergoing the brief sensory pleasure it affords but leaves us poorly nourished with our taste dulled for better fare.

The book was first made into a feature film as a musical, titled Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), directed by Mel Stuart, produced by David L. Wolper, and starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, character actor Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe, and Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket, with music by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley.

[54] In May 2021, it was reported that the film would be a musical titled Wonka, with Timothée Chalamet playing a younger version of the titular character in an origin story.

“The shows will retain the quintessential spirit and tone of the original story while building out the world and characters far beyond the pages of the Dahl book for the very first time,” Netflix said.

[80] The cover photo of the 50th anniversary edition, published by Penguin Modern Classics for sale in the UK and aimed at the adult market, received widespread commentary and criticism.

[82] The cover is a photo of a heavily made up young girl seated on her mother's knee and wearing a doll-like expression, taken by the photographers Sofia Sanchez and Mauro Mongiello as part of a photo shoot for a 2008 fashion article in a French magazine, for a fashion article titled "Mommie Dearest.

"[81][83] In addition to writing that "the image seemingly has little to do with the beloved children's classic",[84] reviewers and commentators in social media (such as posters on the publisher's Facebook page) have said the art evokes Lolita, Valley of the Dolls, and JonBenet Ramsey; looks like a scene from Toddlers & Tiaras; and is "misleading," "creepy," "sexualised," "grotesque," "misjudged on every level," "distasteful and disrespectful to a gifted author and his work," "pretentious," "trashy", "outright inappropriate," "terrifying," "really obnoxious," and "weird & kind of paedophilic.

looks at the children at the center of the story, and highlights the way Roald Dahl’s writing manages to embrace both the light and the dark aspects of life.

The New Yorker describes what it calls this "strangely but tellingly misbegotten" cover design thusly: "The image is a photograph, taken from a French fashion shoot, of a glassy-eyed, heavily made-up little girl.

The girl, with her long, perfectly waved platinum-blond hair and her pink feather boa, looks like a pretty and inert doll—" The article continues: "And if the Stepford daughter on the cover is meant to remind us of Veruca Salt or Violet Beauregarde, she doesn't: those badly behaved squirts are bubbling over with rude life."

Moreover, writes Talbot, "The Modern Classics cover has not a whiff of this validation of childish imagination; instead, it seems to imply a deviant adult audience.