Narnia Universe

Once there is a wardrobe at the back of a spare room, and behind the fur coats the wood gives way to snow, and a lamp-post burns alone among the trees. Step past it and you are in Narnia: a country where the Beasts talk, where fauns carry parcels through the winter, and where the true King is a Lion named Aslan, not safe but good. This is the world C. S. Lewis made — a place reached from our own by wardrobe and painting and railway accident, where children out of wartime England are crowned kings and queens and learn what courage costs. At its heart are the seven Chronicles, from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe through Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, and The Magician's Nephew, to the closing of all things in The Last Battle. Around that core the catalogue keeps the lighter company a loved country gathers: solo-adventure gamebooks that hand you the quest, picture-book retellings and early-reader tales of The World of Narnia, and study companions by other hands. The spine, though, is Lewis alone. What lingers is the tone — grave and merry at once, a fairy-story that means every word of its wonder and its grief, wearing its deeper meanings lightly. Begin where readers first did, with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and let the wardrobe be a surprise; the chronological path that opens with The Magician's Nephew gives away Narnia's making too soon. Further up and further in from there.