"The internecine strife between Lewis aficionados about the order of the Narnia books shows no signs of abating. In principle, both devout Chronologists and sincere Publicationists both allow that people should read the books in whatever order they chose. Yet both groups, in their hearts, believe that their order is best. Fisticuffs can easily develop, and the first excommunications and crusades cannot be far away. In an attempt to resolve this very serious issue, I offer my own, definitive, take on the problem.
1: Chronology vs Publication
C.S Lewis's famous series of children's stories were published between 1950 and 1956, in the following order:
1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)
2. Prince Caspian(1951)
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
4. The Silver Chair (1953)
5. The Horse and His Boy (1954)
6. The Magicians Nephew(1955)
7. The Last Battle (1956)
All current editions of the books, however, number them in a slightly different order:
1. The Magicians Nephew
2. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
3. The Horse and His Boy
4. Prince Caspian
5. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
6. The Silver Chair
7. The Last Battle
This order reflects the chronological sequence of events in the books themselves.
Lewis expressed a mild preference for this second, chronological order. In a letter written in 1957 to an American boy named Laurence, he wrote the following:
'I think I agree with your order {i.e. chronological} 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 as I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them. I'm not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published.
Quoted in "Letters to Children"
On this last point, scholars who have written about Narnia agree: the books were not published in the order that they were written. The writing order appears to have been
1: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
2: (Abandoned version of Magicians Nephew)
3: Prince Caspian
4: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
5: Horse and His Boy
6: Silver Chair
7: Magicians Nephew
8: Last Battle
The case for reading the books in chronological order is the self-evident one: it makes more sense, particularly for children, to read a series of stories in the order in which they happened.
The case for reading the books in published order includes the following:
Given that most people read and re-read the books many times, does this sort of nit-picking matter? Almost certainly not. However, I believe that argument is not, in fact an argument about which order to read the books in, but about which order to think of the books in. The reason that the discussion occasionally becomes heated is that the camps are not merely arguing for a particular sequence, but for a particular interpretation.
Let us imagine two innocent readers, sitting down to approach 'Narnia' for the first time.
One takes down from the shelf a big, leather bound edition, with illuminated capitals and line numbers. The big red book is entitled The Chronicles of Narnia. There is a contents page listing 'Vol. 1: The Magicians Nephew, Vol.: 2 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe' and so on. On hardback pages, the book would be shorter than Lord of the Rings or David Copperfield. Our reader would be quite clear that what he was embarking on was one long story, telling the story of an imaginary world from beginning to end.
Another virgin reader goes to a second hand bookshop and picks up a cheap paperback edition of Prince Caspian. There is an appalling, lurid fantasy picture on the cover, by someone who has obviously never read the book. The opening pages imply that it is a sequel of some kind, but he happily finds that it is quite self-contained. He goes back to the bookshop, and finds another book, a hardback, in a non-uniform edition. This is The Silver Chair. He comes away with the impression that Lewis wrote a number (he does not know how many, maybe thousands) of fairy stories, all nominally in a linked world and with a recurrent motif (Aslan) but otherwise, not very closely related. He gradually, and out of order, reads the whole lot—although he himself does not know that he is finished because he does not know what Lewis wrote.
It seems to me that these two people have had different reading experiences. They will be inclined to interpret the books in different ways.
Now, to my mind, every attempt to say 'you should read the books in this order, you should read them in that order' is an attempt to hierarchise the types of reading-experience, and thus to encourage a particular interpretation.
If you start out peering through the wardrobe into the snow, and are led across Narnia by the wonderfully anachronistic Mr Tumnus; if you first learn of Aslan from Mr and Mrs Beaver over high-tea and a warm fire, then you are likely to think of Narnia as 'that place that started out as a slightly whimsical fairy tale and gathered more and more religious significance as it went on'. If you first learn of Narnia during its creation, and first see Aslan when he is singing the world into being, you are more likely to think of it as a primarily theological, mythological narrative.
The very project of calling it The Chronicles of Narnia is bringing something outside of the text to bear on our readings. 'Read this,' it seems to say 'as the history of an imaginary world, not as a collection of fairy tales with a linked background.'
I do not say that the version of Narnia implied by The Chronicles and the sequential numbering is wrong: I say only that it is not neutral; it presupposes a theory about what Narnia is.
Books—all books—are complicated things, muttering at us in different contradictory voices, refusing to stay the same when we go back to them. Tying them down too much robs of them of the magic."
-Austin
! lol nice thingamajigga or thingamabobba or watchamacallit
I've read the books in both orders and loved both orders quite equally.
