Lewis created Narnia by drawing on a wide range of influences, including mythology, medieval literature, and his own imagination. He was inspired by the stories of Greek and Roman gods, Norse sagas, and British folklore, blending them into a unique world where animals talk, magic exists, and children can become kings and queens. The name "Narnia" itself comes from a town in England where Lewis once lived, though the world he built is entirely fictional. The creation of Narnia is first detailed in *The Magician's Nephew*, where Aslan sings the world into existence. This origin story introduces key elements like the lamp-post, which was created by the Witch's misguided attempt to curse Narnia, and the founding of Cair Paravel by Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. Lewis used the biblical concept of creation through divine song as a metaphor for the power of imagination and the importance of storytelling. The world of Narnia is also deeply rooted in Lewis's love for nature and his background in medieval literature. The landscapes, creatures, and themes reflect his fascination with forests, castles, and talking animals, which he saw as a way to explore deeper truths about life and faith. The inclusion of characters like Reepicheep, Mr Tumnus, and the White Witch adds layers of adventure and moral struggle, drawing from both mythological and fairy-tale traditions. The series *The Chronicles of Narnia* spans seven books, each contributing to the rich lore of Narnia. Lewis's storytelling invites readers to suspend disbelief and engage with a world where the boundaries between reality and fantasy blur, much like the transition between the ordinary world and Narnia in the stories themselves.

In brief

A single image inspired the entire series. Lewis described it in 1960 in a short text, It All Began with a Picture: at about sixteen, he “sees” a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels through a snowy wood. We are around 1914. The image remains for about twenty-five years. Then one day, around his fortieth birthday, Lewis thinks: let’s try to turn this into a story.

Did you know

On 2 September 1939, on the eve of the declaration of war, three schoolgirls evacuated from London arrive at the Kilns, Lewis’s home near Oxford. More children will follow during the war. Lewis, a forty-year-old bachelor who had rarely spent time with children, discovers their company. A few weeks later, he scribbles on the back of another manuscript the beginning of a tale: four children, Ann, Martin, Rose and Peter, must leave London because of the air raids and are sent to an old professor who lives alone in the countryside.

The fragment stops there. Lewis has other projects: The Screwtape Letters, BBC talks, the Space Trilogy, his lectures. The four children will wait.

On screen

Around 1948, the children are now called Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, and they pass through a wardrobe. In 1948, Lewis told an American visitor, Chad Walsh, that he was working on a children’s book “in the tradition of E. Nesbit”, the writer who had enchanted his childhood. Then, he says, Aslan arrives “bounding” into the story. Lewis had been having many lion dreams at the time. He didn’t know where this Lion came from, but once there, Aslan gathered the whole story together and led the other six books along with him.

In the books

Lewis did not plan a series. He explained this in 1957 to a young American: when writing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, he didn’t know he would write more; Prince Caspian was meant to be a single sequel; after The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he was sure it would be the last. He was wrong. Here is how the books came together, according to the biographers Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper:

1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe : finished at the end of March 1949, published on 16 October 1950 by Geoffrey Bles, with illustrations by Pauline Baynes.
2. Prince Caspian : finished just after Christmas 1949, published on 15 October 1951.
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader : written in January and February 1950, published on 15 September 1952.
4. The Horse and His Boy : begun in March 1950, finished at the end of July 1950, but published only on 6 September 1954.
5. The Silver Chair : finished at the beginning of March 1951, published on 7 September 1953. Its working title was Night under Narnia.
6. The Last Battle : finished in March 1953, published on 19 March 1956 by The Bodley Head (the American edition followed on 4 September). It won the Carnegie Medal, a major British prize for children’s literature.
7. The Magician’s Nephew : the most difficult. Lewis began it as early as 1949, got stuck on the story, abandoned it, then picked it up again, and finally finished it in February 1954. It was published on 2 May 1955 by The Bodley Head.

Thus in just over five years Lewis wrote the seven books. They were published at the rate of one per year, from 1950 to 1956. It was Roger Lancelyn Green who, in March 1951, after reading The Silver Chair, first spoke of the “Chronicles of Narnia”.

Going further

Among the early attempts to tell the origins of Narnia, scholars know of a draft called the “Lefay fragment”. In it we meet a young Digory who understands the language of trees and animals, a Polly, and a somewhat alarming godmother, Mrs Lefay. Lewis set it aside, but several ideas survived in another form in The Magician’s Nephew.

Trivia

• The name : Lewis found it in an atlas of ancient history he had used as a teenager. He had underlined the Latin name of the small Umbrian town of Narni, Narnia, because he liked the sound of it.
• The illustrations : Pauline Baynes, discovered through Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham, illustrated all seven books. She also drew the first map of Narnia.
• Consistency : the geography and chronology were built up as Lewis wrote. He kept for himself a “Narnian timeline” with dates, which today allows us to place each book.

What strikes us most

Lewis wrote the Narnia books at fifty, at the height of his academic career, during a period when his daily life was heavy: Mrs Moore, who lived with him, was ill and demanding, and his brother Warnie struggled with alcohol. The Chronicles were born in the margins of a very full life, without an overall plan, almost in spite of their author. Perhaps that is what gives them their freshness.