Lewis scholars almost universally agree that we should disagree with what Lewis said about the order of publication.
In 1995, a new publisher began releasing the Narnia books, abandoning the American edition for the English. For three decades, then, you could get the Chronicles of Narnia in editions numbered in two ways:
In America, however, the books continued to be released in their original publication order into the 90s. Eventually, British editions of the series were numbered chronologically. He suggested that chronological order might be the easiest way to read the Chronicles (see Lewis’s letter of 21 April 1957 and corresponding footnote 43 in Lewis’s Collected Letters III, 847-48). After the last book was released, Lewis was asked about the best order for reading the books. This book was published first, and Lewis was not at all certain he would write anymore. Lewis wrote the Narnia books over a period of four to five years, starting with The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Is this a strange quirk in Narnian numerology-part of its deep magic? Or could it be a dark conspiracy to ruin the books-part of the machinations of Screwtape? The truth is, it’s neither as interesting nor as sinister, but the order in which we read the books can definitely affect our experience of them.Ĭ. Some Narnia fans are perhaps happily oblivious to the questions of which book to read first and what order the series should be read in, but others have doubtless run across the question either because they noticed that book two in the series (as it’s currently numbered) was made into a movie before book one, or because they have seen both older and newer sets of the Chronicles and noticed different numbering systems on the covers or spines.
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