To start things off I’d like to begin at, well, the beginning! That is, how Narnia was birthed. Not how the land was created as told in the stories, but how C.S. Lewis came up with the idea for this great masterpiece. While the first story was not published until he was 51 years old, the initial thoughts for the first story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe began when Jack (that’s what his friends called him) was 16 years old. Can you image having a 35 year gap between getting an idea and having it in print?
In an essay Lewis wrote about the experience he shared that as a teenager he saw a picture in his mind “of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood.” However, it wasn’t until just over two dozen years later that he sat down to try to see what he could do with that vision. Sadly, nothing much came from this attempt and so it was a failure. Then in 1948 everything changed when Jack was having dreams of lions. Thus the character of Aslan was born and “He pulled the whole story together.”
That’s all for now. But if you want to learn more about Narnia and other things related to C.S. Lewis check out my site EssentialCSLewis.com.