The Chronicles of Narnia – Don’t start at the beginning!

The countdown to Christmas is on! Different things make us feel festive – it may be opening your first Advent Calendar door, hearing Mariah Carey warbling in the supermarket where tins of Quality Street are piled sky-high, or your neighbours putting up their giant inflatable Santa! For me, something that never fails to get me in the Christmas mood is finding a cosy spot and a little quiet time to read something, and in the run up to Christmas I particularly love to re-read some of my favourites. These are books that have become firm friends over the years, and saying hello to the characters again is comforting and cosy, and for me signals the start to the festive season. Among my favourites to re-read year after year is the wonderful children’s fantasy quest adventure The Box of Delights (I mean mice on roller-skates, how can you not adore it?), or North Child, where the story of Rose and her White Bear weaves together adventure, family and magic with lashings of snow!  Top of the pile of my books to re-read at Christmas however is a book that so many of us are familiar with – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Opening my dog-eared copy and getting to the moment where I can walk with Lucy Pevensie through the Wardrobe and into Narnia still remains thrilling, no matter how many times I read it!

What to say about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which is part of the seven book The Chronicles of Narnia series? As the author Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was born 125 years ago this year, and died 60 years ago it could have been a good anniversary opportunity to write a Blog about his life and work. Or we could have touched on the fact that Netflix acquired the rights to the whole seven book series and have big plans to create a universe with different strands and stories, like the Marvel cinematic universe. There are no firm dates or plans yet, but rumours are the films won’t be ‘in order’ and may possibly start with The Silver Chair.

Why start with The Silver Chair? Well, that is indeed part of a conundrum that has always surrounded the Narnia Chronicles. Do you have a copy of the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe somewhere nearby? It is the book almost everyone reads first, and the first in the series, no? Then why, if you look at your copy does it have a number ‘2’ on the spine, denoting it as the second in the series? Why does nobody start the series with The Magician’s Nephew which has the 1 on its spine and is indeed the first in the series. In fact, if you ask colleagues and friends which book is first in the Narnia series most of them will instinctively say ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’! I was once asked to recommend a new series for a young fantasy fan, and recommended The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the customer returned the book with a slightly irate note ‘why would you recommend the second book in the series, surely you need to start at the beginning!’. So why is there confusion between what we think of as the start of the series, and how the publisher has numbered them?

First, here is the published order, and the order the books were written by CS Lewis:

1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)

2. Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia (1951)

3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

4. The Silver Chair (1953)

5. The Horse and His Boy (1954)

6. The Magician’s Nephew (1955)

7. The Last Battle (1956)

Yet, the supposed chronological order, and the order of the numbers on the spines of the books are as follows:

1. The Magician’s Nephew

2. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

3. The Horse and His Boy

4. Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia

5. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

6. The Silver Chair

7. The Last Battle

It is not uncommon in a large series to sometimes have books written out of order by the author, or find that the publication dates don’t follow the chronological order of the stories – but what makes the Narnia series so unique is the controversy about the author’s intended order and also the fact that most of us ignore the ‘intended’ order and start at number 2!

Up until 1994 there were, confusingly, two reading orders in print. When first published, the books had no numbers. Later American editions, from publisher Macmillan numbered the books in publication order with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as first in the series, whilst in the UK HarperCollins publishers opted to use the chronological order. In 1994 HarperCollins became the sole publisher of the series, and all editions now follow the chronological order, with The Magician’s Nephew as first in the series and this still stands today.

So why the confusion? Mostly it stems from CS Lewis never making it implicitly clear how he intended the series to be read, therefore opinions on where especially The Magician’s Nephew and The Horse and his Boy should sit are loudly voiced. Both these novels have action that takes place significantly earlier than the other books in the series and fall outside of the main story arc.

The main reason cited by HarperCollins for publishing in chronological order is that in 1957 a young fan called Lawrence Krieg wrote a letter to CS Lewis. He was re-reading the books for the second time and wondered if he should read them chronologically and his mother argued with him that he should read them in the original published order. Young Lawrence decided to write to the author himself to settle the matter and received this reply:

“I think I agree with your [chronological] order for reading the books more than with your mother’s. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn’t think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last. But I found I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone reads them.” - CS Lewis, 23 April 1957

This letter is always quoted by both sides of the controversy. Those in favour see this as clear proof Lewis wanted the books read in chronological order. Those against point out that Lewis suggested the order “does not matter very much” in the same letter and that perhaps he was simply being kind to Lawrence, and if he felt strongly about it he had the chance to re-number the books himself if he really wanted to do so.

Using this quote and with the input of Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham, who cited that ‘Jack’ (which is what CS Lewis was called by friends and family) preferred the order to be chronological, HarperCollins made the decision to recommend to readers to enjoy these novels in an order that saw The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe positioned as the second book in the series.

HarperCollins, in some editions, now include this notice on the copyright page:

Although The Magician's Nephew was written several years after CS Lewis first began The Chronicles of Narnia, he wanted it to be read as the first book in the series. HarperCollins is happy to present these books in the order in which Professor Lewis preferred.

However the controversy continues as several scholars say that reading The Magician’s Nephew first is not the introduction to the story that CS Lewis had intended – indeed Narnia is mentioned in the first paragraph as if the reader is already familiar with it, whereas The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with its wonderful cupboard of fur coats as a portal into the magical world of Narnia is a ‘proper’ introduction to this world and sets the scene for the whole story arc. The Magician’s Nephew is now often viewed as an ‘origin story’, a term that has become more commonly used in recent years, instead of using the word prequel. And like other origin stories it is better to know the whole story first. The Magician’s Nephew becomes a much better book if you’ve read and fallen in love with the whole series first, if you’ve already met the majestical Aslan, learnt about The Professor who owns the wardrobe (spoiler alert, he is a young boy in this story and the eponymous ‘nephew’ in the title….). If you read The Magician’s Nephew last, then you can go back to the beginning and almost experience the entire story as a flashback and you can feel all the pieces fall into place that way. For younger fans there is also the simple fact that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a much more captivating story which will compel them to read the other six books, whereas The Magician’s Nephew doesn’t grab readers in the same fantastical and magical  way.

So, when I settle down for some cosy Christmas reading and I re-read The Narnia Chronicles this Christmas I will start with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and I would always recommend that everyone starts there – ignore the 2 on the spine, this is one series where you shouldn’t start at the beginning!

Claudia, Content Selection Team

PS. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe isn’t a Christmas book I hear you say? Oh, but it is. There’s a sleigh with bells on, there’s afternoon tea, a White Witch who has cast a spell so that it’s ‘always winter but never Christmas’, there’s warm coats in wardrobes, snowy, snowy landscapes and Father Christmas handing out presents. Need I say more? If Die Hard can be a Christmas Movie, then The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe can certainly be the most wonderful Christmastime read….

Want to read all seven books now to decide for yourself in which order they should be read?
You can buy the complete Chronicles of Narnia boxset at Browns for a fantastically low price!