Johan Anthon Abraham Fjeldsted Dahl (1 January 1807 – 16 March 1877) was a Norwegian bookseller and publisher. He was a patron of the arts and was co-founder of Oslo Kunstforening.
Dahl was born in Copenhagen as the son of shoemaker John Dahl and Anne Kirstine Willumsen. He was married to singer and music teacher Emma Amalie Charlotte Freyse (1819–1896).[1]
A controversy occurred in 1836, when Dahl published Andreas Munch's poetry collection Ephemerer. The police demanded that the book should be censored before its publication, while Dahl, in opposition to censorship, refused. The case eventually ended in a victory for Dahl in the Supreme Court.[1][2]
Dahl is immortalized through Henrik Wergeland's farcePapegøien (The Parrot) from 1835, where his course of life forms the basis for a wild parody.[6][7] When Dahl learned about the farce, he offered to publish the book, something Wergeland found amusing and agreed to. But as a revenge Dahl put a label on the title page of the book, without Wergeland's knowledge, where it said that the complete profit was to be donated to charity.[6]