As someone who has been known to start series smack in the middle—with both books and television shows—I tend to be a bit agnostic on the question of “what order should I read/watch these in?” With three exceptions:
Legends of Tomorrow, which everyone, without exception, should start in the second season, only tackling the first season much, much later after getting a chance to realize that these characters can actually be fun.
Blackadder, which everyone, without exception, should also start in the second season, only in this case, never return to the first season at all.
And The Chronicles of Narnia, which everyone, without exception, should read in publication order.
That is:
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
- Prince Caspian
- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
- The Silver Chair
- The Horse and His Boy
- The Magician’s Nephew
- The Last Battle
At least for the first read.
It’s fair to say that not all readers, or even all publishers, agree with me. After all, the story of Narnia—its very very earliest beginnings—technically starts with the sixth book on that The Magician’s Nephew, which tells the story of the creation of Narnia, in a scene C.S. Lewis pretty much ripped off straight from the then-unpublished work of his close friend, J.R.R. Tolkien. (Tolkien later noted that he did not think overly highly of the Narnia books, with this sort of thing presumably partly why.) The events of The Horse and His Boy happen during the last few pages of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, featuring various characters from that book in various cameo appearances. And lots of people like to start a story at the very beginning.
Plus, reading the books in publication order does mean smashing head-on into arguably the weakest work of the entire Narnia series, Prince Caspian, a work that not only contains several bits that really don’t make a lot of sense, once scrutinized, but also is largely told in a flashback format, and has a comparatively weak ending that can and has left readers dissatisfied. So perhaps not the best approach.
Also, to be fair, the publication order doesn’t always match the written order. The Horse and His Boy is not just set in the last few pages of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but was also written before The Silver Chair, despite being published afterwards. It’s the sort of publishing thing that happens all the time, but for readers focused on following a writer’s development and reading books in the order that they’re written, well—publication order isn’t the best way to do that for the Narnia series.
And C.S. Lewis himself once told a young fan that chronological order was probably the best way to read the series.
This all presumably explains why several editions of The Chronicles of Narnia now list the books in chronological order—to the point where many readers now think that the chronological order is the publication order.
This is still wrong.
I say this, because in later rereads, I did try to read the Narnia books in chronological order. And let me tell you what happens when you try this:
The Magician’s Nephew pulls away quite a bit of the magic.
Part of the joy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is just how much is left unexplained—that lamppost shining in the trees, for instance, with presumably no source of gas or electricity; Mrs. Beaver’s sewing machine; why, exactly, Father Christmas is visiting a land which shouldn’t even have Christmas. Aslanmas, sure, but Christmas, no.
The Magician’s Nephew tries to explain quite a bit of this, in the process robbing the scenes of their wonder (and screwing up the geography of Narnia; the Lamppost should not be as far away from other places as it is)—while, aggravatingly, still leaving other elements—like that sewing machine—unexplained, or for that matter, making even less sense—like Father Christmas—than they did originally.
Buy the Book
In An Absent Dream
And reading these books in chronological order just spotlights how inconsistent they are. For instance, at the beginning of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Tummus the Faun is not certain that humans even exist—he even has a book on his shelves that asks that very question, presumably in the negative, given his surprise upon seeing Lucy. In The Horse and His Boy, which, again, takes place during The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, we find out that just south of Narnia—no more than a couple of days riding on horseback, is an entire empire filled with humans. That is something, frankly, a little easier to overlook, or at least accept, when you have a few books to read between these moments, including books that showcase other humans, rather than trying to suggest that the Pevensies are the only ones around.
Worse, just because The Magician’s Nephew was written and published after the other Narnia books, it includes several elements that don’t appear in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because C.S. Lewis hadn’t thought of them yet. So, for instance, Polly and Digory look at what will be Archenland and other lands, mentioning them—places that, if you read in chronological order, won’t be mentioned for a few more books.
And although reading in publication order does mean contending with Prince Caspian fairly early on, starting with The Magician’s Nephew means beginning with another weak link in the series. Granted, in either reading order, it takes awhile to reach the best book in the series, The Silver Chair, but with publication order, you at least get to lead off with a good book. With chronological order, you get weak book first—and one that spends very little time in Narnia. Oh, the London stuff in it is all very amusing—some of the best comedy stuff that Lewis ever wrote—but it’s not Narnia.
No. Read in publication order, so that you can read along as Lewis starts discovering this world—a world that can be reached if you just find the right sort of wardrobe. A world that in many ways resembles a dream, what with the talking animals and the inexplicable sewing machines and the parcels apparently just purchased by a Faun in a land that seemingly has no stores—but is, the author assures you, quite quite real. And then, in the next book, find out that yes, it’s a world that you can return to—not on your own, but with help. Maybe. For one more trip. A world that is just a bit larger than it initially seemed. A world with dragons. A world with giants. And an entire empire that managed to go unnoticed on your first visit.
And then—only then—read how it was created, right before you read how it ends.
If you do, however, continue to wrongly insist that the books be read in chronological order, here they are:
- The Magician’s Nephew
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
- The Horse and His Boy
- Prince Caspian
- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
- The Silver Chair
- The Last Battle
Originally published December 2017
Mari Ness Lives in central Florida.
I don’t know if Lewis rips off Tolkien – I thought Tolkien was sniffy about the books because he hated allegory? – but he certainly, um, leans on Edith Nesbit. Magician’s Nephew is very close to, I think, Phoenix and the Carpet (or one of the others in that series, I’m not 100% sure which) -I read Nephew late, as you advise, and had already read Nesbit and it was VERY obvious.
Also, while the EVENTS in the books don’t happen in publication order, the NARRATION of the books most certainly does happen in publication order — how many times in Magician’s Nephew does it, explicitly in the text, say something like, “Remember that Lamp Post that the Pevensies found in the forest?”, and the proceed to explain why the Lamp Post is there in the first place.
In my opinion The Last Battle is best not read at all.
The version I heard of Lewis’ opinion is that the kid who asked if they could be read in chronological order was his publisher’s kid, and so Lewis said, “Well, yes, of course, you could do that…”
I agree, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe should be everyone’s introduction to Narnia. Also, I agree about Blackadder: the genius really starts in season 2.
this probably implies I should take your advice about Legends of Tomorrow, then…
I seem to remember reading that at the time of his death Lewis had been contemplating a significant revision of the Narnia books. I don’t know if this meant ironing out a lot of the plot inconsistencies, or a more major reworking of some of the theological-philosophical structure in the light of his own crisis of belief and its reconciliation following the death of Joy Davidson. Does anyone else know of this?
Codswallop. If you skip the first series of Black Adder you miss the genius of Brian Blessed.
@1, Lewis actually mentions Nesbit’s Bastables in the opening of Magician’s Nephew.
@1, I re-read The Magician’s Nephew recently, and I think you might be right that there’s a bit of homage there. Lewis name-checks the Bastable Children at one point, and Uncle Andrew bears a bit of a resemblance to one of the characters in The Story of the Amulet, which is the third after Five Children And It and The Phoenix and the Carpet.
I’m apparently alone in liking both The Last Battle and The Magician’s Nephew, though really only the London bits in the latter. In fact, the end of both books are where Lewis really ramps up the allegory to a non-narrative degree, and is not super. But the rest of the books, yes.
Definitely to be read in publication order. The Magician’s Nephew is constructed as a flashback, as you say, and to a much lesser degree, so is A Horse and His Boy. When the Narnians show up, it’s definitely got the flavour of cameo appearances by old faves.
I love Magician’s Nephew but then I am also a big fan of Nesbitt (and flying horses rescued from pulling hackney’s in London) and arguably Lewis’s feistiest heroine. Certainly the Last Battle is a total downer and one I never re-read. LWandW, for all its childhood wonder, is very strange read as an adult and I like it less every time.
The sewing machine doesn’t use electricity: the illustration clearly has it as a treadle sewing machine which is why they couldn’t bring it with them.
That said, publication order, every time. The Magician’s Nephew HAS to be a flashback because otherwise, the fact that it’s the Professor as one of the children won’t make a difference, among other things.
Whatever you do, read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe first. There is nothing to beat being with Lucy going through the wardrobe for the first time and having no idea what comes next. Don’t cheat yourself on that moment.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader remains my favourite. Several of its lines sent a shiver down my spine:
“It is not for you, a son of Adam, to know what faults a star can commit.”
“I call all times soon”
“Indeed,yes, I will tell it to you for years and years.”
Marie, Mr. Tumnus would like to have his name spelled correctly.
I don’t recall, but there’s a good chance I started with Horse. It would certainly fit my later trend. (First Damiano: Raphael. First Vlad Taltos: Phoenix. First Miles: Mirror Dance. That one actually works pretty well as a capsule introduction.)
I don’t remember disliking Nephew, though it’s been a long long time. But yeah, I would endorse publication over chronological. I think my favorites are Voyage and Horse, maybe Silver Chair too though it wasn’t as good as memory a year or two ago.
But even as an atheist kid I found the religious aspects rather unmissable. An adult eye just showed the depth: it’s not just “Aslan is Jesus”, but the White Witch claiming Edmund under the Law of the Stone Table(ts), which Aslan agrees with, a Law superceded by his sacrifice. And she has a bunch of Jewish stereotypes, I mean Black Dwarfs, working for her, the same race who later deny the obvious evidence of Aslan in the Last Battle…
@15, could you please spell Mari’s name correctly when making that request?
I definitely think they’re best read in publication order. When I was reading and re-reading them (late ’70s, early ’80s) I don’t recall that reading them in chronological order was a thing ever suggested. The boxed set I had numbered them in publication order. It seems to me that packaging idea arose later.
Personally I started with Voyage of the Dawn Treader and was a bit confused about the backstory but how I did love that ship! Eventually I read them all and I’m embarrassed to admit I entirely missed the painfully obvious Christian parallels, though I did grasp Aslan’s numinous nature. What can I say? I was thirteen in a non Christian family.
Skipping the first series of Black Adder means missing Brian Blessed! The Witchsmeller Pursuivant! The Spanish Infanta!
(It is not as good as the later series, but it has it’s gems).
@18, glad it wasn’t just me. The Jesus parallels in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe are thuddingly obvious to me as an adult, but as a Jewish kid with little knowledge of Christian theology Aslan just came off as a pretty cool fantasy deity.
This may also be a reason why The Last Battle really didn’t work for me.
Think of the first Blackadder series as a prequel to Maid Marian and Her Merry Men instead of a Blackadder show, and Tony Robinson playing an ancestor of his Sheriff of Nottingham instead of Baldrick. That works.
Children’s author Katherine Langrish has been posting some beautifully written and researched reactions in her “Re-Reading Narnia” entries on her blog at Seven Miles of Steel Thistles. This is a series that has been running on and off since 2014, and her critique of The Last Battle appeared just a couple of weeks ago. All of these are worth your attention, I think, but my personal favourites are her essays on The Magician’s Nephew and The Silver Chair.
@7 But can even Brian Blessed make up for everything else in Season 1?
@23, for me, YES!
@20, I hated The Last Battle virulently as a child, He killed Narnia!!!! As an adult I acknowledge the logic of Lewis’ choice but I still don’t like it. I wasn’t happy about the ending of LOTR either though I am fully reconciled to it, unlike TLB.
I am very fond of all the Narnia books, which I started reading at 7 yrs old, beginning with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, which newcomers should definitely read first, to get the full magic, as has already been said.
Nothing quite like entering a magical world through the back of a large cupboard full of coats, to get a child’s imagination soaring. I loved it.
My own personal view, is that The Horse And His Boy should be read second (not that I did first time around), and the rest in publishing order.
So as follows.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Horse and His Boy
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Magician’s Nephew
The Last Battle
On subsequent reads, I always read them chronologically, without any detrimental effect … having already been captivated by the magic, which I still feel some 50+ years later.
I also think people can over-analyze books, and many have certainly done that with the Narnia series. I had some inkling (sic) of religious aspects, but they were only ever minor for me. I judged the stories on their own merits and not whether some agenda was going on. I was religious at the time of first reading, but have been the complete opposite for many years now, so I certainly wasn’t brainwashed or influenced by any religious overtones or supposed allegory.
As a child, I wanted to live in that world, and even as a grown man I still feel the pull. I dislike many aspects of religion and a belief in God, but being a decent caring loving person does not require them.
So if you want to blame those books for anything, it is for myself and others not entirely growing up, but hanging onto a bit of the wonder and magic of childhood.
Isn’t this really a debate regarding when The Magician’s Nephew should be read? For the five books that convey the bulk of the primary storyline, the chronological and publication orders are aligned, while The Horse and His Boy is a mostly self-contained, world-building side quest that can be read pretty much any time between The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and The Last Battle.
The ‘spoliers’ created by reading TMN and THaHB in chronological order may have one small advantage for some adult readers (like this guy). By introducing various story-critical elements earlier in the series, they partially counterbalance a somewhat frustrating tic of the narrative style: the penchant for introducing plot-critical characters or elements at the exact moment the plot requires them, with no lampshading from any of the other characters, and then explaining it a few pages (or chapters) later with a narrative infodump.
@@@@@#1 David: Tolkien’s gripe with Narnia, as I recall, was its mixing and matching of elements from different mythologies–dwarfs and unicorns alongside fauns and centaurs, and the like–which he regarded as distasteful. Ironic, that, as his own work blended north European Pagan and Christian influences.
I have a niece who unfortunately didn’t consult me on proper reading order and read The Magician’s Nephew first, knowing nothing else about the series. Then she read LWW and was baffled by the inconsistencies and as a result dropped the series.
For some reason, I read the series in publication order except for Prince Caspian, which I read sometime after Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I remember wondering who this Caspian fellow was and why Lucy was so happy to see him. I think I may have been reading my cousins’ copies of the books while visiting them, and their copy of PC had been lost or was shelved somewhere else. Just as well.
Does anybody know whether Lewis also wrote MN before The Silver Chair? There are no Marsh-wiggles at the Creation.
My First Miles was also Mirror Dance (which is perhaps more a First Mark than a First Miles.)
And while THAHB is my favorite Narnia book (My husband and I basically got married for the same reason Aravis and Shasta did) my second favorite is PC for the amazing flavor of autumn and regret of the first few chapters. Although I really love VDT as well.
@7 Vincent W & @19 Doug – I believe it’s pronounced BRIAN BLESSED!!
And indeed series one does have much to commend it, but should be seen as distinct from the rest of the Blackadder oeuvre.
The change in writing team and style is very sharp. I like both, but I can see why some people who like the later stuff may not “get” series one.
I always had a bad habit of skipping around and not reading things in order, so I don’t know what order I originally read the books in, and in some cases I was probably reading two at once. I did read Lion first, though, and it definitely should be read before Magician’s Nephew. I mean, the narrator even says the reader doesn’t know who Aslan is, which of course you would if you read Nephew (or any of the others) beforehand.
One thing I didn’t notice about THaHB on first reading that Mari touches on is the existence of so many human characters in the Narnian world. Even in PC, when humans have conquered Narnia, Aslan explains how they got there. In THaHB, the Pevensies even have a retainer called Lord Peridan, which fits in with the other Telmarine names in a time when the Telmarines apparently hadn’t yet arrived in the world. On the other hand, the very end of TLtWatW does mention other royalty in the world wanting to marry Susan and Lucy, although it doesn’t specifically say they’re human and we know that humans can have children with other Narnian humanoids.
One more exception: for the Dune series, the correct reading order is to read the first book, and then stop.
(And arguably, for The Wheel of Time, the right order is to not start in the first place.)
I personally began Zelazny’s Amber series with The Hand of Oberon. To say I was confused would be a massive understatement. Do Not begin a five book series with the fourth book!
When I first discovered Tolkien (upon seeing the 1977 Rankin/Bass Hobbit), I immediately ran to the library and picked up The Hobbit, which I adored, and The Two Towers, which was the only LotR paperback I could find on the shelf. And I was very confused and had to kind of abandon it; fortunately, my aunt then lent me her copies of the full trilogy and I never looked back.
Totally agree. I have a rebellious OCD habit of re-ordering the Narnia books on other people’s shelves whenever I see them displayed in chronological order. Librarians hate me.
I used to reorder series in chronological order on library shelves. Now I an a librarian and I hate myself. No, honestly I still think my way makes more sense.
@32: I’d agree with that, but I’d say (to mix media here) even MORE important is to watch “The Matrix”. Then stop.
If you can only pull that trick once, then Avoiding (with a capital A) “The Matrix Reloaded” and “Matrix Revolutions” is more important than not reading “Dune Messiah” and “Children of Dune”…although if you do read those, STOP THERE. The quality of the stories in steep decline already, plunges, Wile E. Coyote-like, off a cliff to end a tiny apocalyptic puff of dust between “Children of Dune” and “God-Emperor of Dune”.
(GEoD was so bad I had to look up what came after CoD, my memory having drawn a blessed veil over my recollection.)
Great article!
I totally agree that publication order is the right way to go for the series. As others have said, nothing beats the magic of reading LWW for the first time.
My personal favorite is The Horse and His Boy. I really loved stories about horses around the time I read the series, and that may have factored into how much I love the story. It is also a really atmospheric book, and I appreciate that.
My least favorite is The Last Battle. I have only read it once because it was too sad. I am a Christian and have always enjoyed the allegory in the Narnia books, but LB just doesn’t work for me.
According to the timeline Lewis later worked out, the Narnian world only lasted 2555 years. Even Young Earth Creationists think our world is older than that. Why such a hurry to destroy your own creation, Aslan?
@22 Thanks for the recommendation.
Not only does skipping Blackadder series one mean missing Brian Blessed, it also means missing Peter Cook’s utterly delightful Richard III in the first episode. (“A horse! My kingdom for a horse! Ah, Horsie!”)
And the argument for the merits of Hell over Heaven in episode three? Beautiful. (“No, you see, the thing about Heaven, is that Heaven is for people who like the sort of things that go on in Heaven, like, uh, well, singing, talking to God, watering pot plants….”) One of the best adaptations of the Beckett story ever.
BA series one is a gear shift, especially if you catch it after one or more of the other series. Edmund is basically Baldrick and vice-versa, for a start. But it’s genius. It is to the Renaissance what Futurama was to physics–one in joke after another, sometimes coming so quick you have to watch an episode three times to catch half of them. Watch!
I think everyone should definitely read LWW first. And the Caspian trilogy should obviously be read in order. But I would argue that The Magician’s Nephew and/or The Horse and His Boy could easily be slotted in after Wardrobe but before Caspian. In fact, I think Wardrobe, Horse, Nephew is a good order to read them in, both because Horse essentially takes place immediately after Wardrobe, and because as Mari mentioned, Nephew assumes the reader has already heard of Archenland (and introduces its founders). I don’t recall anything in Nephew that would be a spoiler for the Caspian trilogy.
And personally, I like both Horse and Nephew much better then Caspian (together with The Silver Chair, they’re my three favorite books in the series). I don’t know why Nephew would be considered a “weak link”. It’s not even the “London bits” or Aslan singing the world into existence that are my favorite parts. I love the casual in-passing reference to Atlantis. I love Polly and Diggory figuring out how the rings work. I love the entire episode in Charn (really, some of the most atmospheric writing in the whole series). I love the tremendous fecundity of the young Narnia: the toffee tree, the lamppost grown from an iron bar, the gold and silver trees grown from Uncle Andrew’s loose change and used to fashion crowns. And the funniest moment, IMO, is the animals mistaking Uncle Andrew for a tree and “planting” him upside-down.
As far as the continuity errors are concerned, it occurs to me that they could be pretty easily solved by retconning Wardrobe so that humans aren’t considered mythical, but are simply kept out of Narnia by the White Witch’s magic. That would explain why the Pevensies’ presence is such a big deal, and why Mr. Tumnus has never seen a human in the flesh before, and has to confirm that Lucy really is one. For that matter, the book on his shelf could be propaganda put out by the witch (just as the Master Control Program in Tron tries to squelch belief in Users).
@12: Mari mentioned electricity in connection with the lamppost, not the sewing machine. I think the issue with the latter is that Narnia lacks the sort of industrial base that would be needed to manufacture one.
I didn’t read them all as a child, and didn’t have a clue about the “correct” order. However I recently decided to read the first one I picked up. Sadly I couldn’t get by the absurdly upper middle class 50s style golly gosh and lashings of ginger beer language among the hideous human kids. A common complaint re Blyton etc I know and they wrote about what they knew didn’t they?!
Mari mentioned electricity in connection with the lamppost, not the sewing machine. I think the issue with the latter is that Narnia lacks the sort of industrial base that would be needed to manufacture one.
Oh, well, that’s solvable if you think about how the lamppost happened. Queen Helen I (first queen of Narnia) had a reel of cotton in her apron pocket when she came through from our world, and dropped it by accident, and it grew into a sewing-machine bush. No one in Narnia knows how to build them, but they don’t have to.
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