The Chronicles of Narnia Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe | 1950 | Buy |
| Prince Caspian | 1951 | Buy |
| The Voyage of the Dawn Treader | 1952 | Buy |
| The Silver Chair | 1953 | Buy |
| The Horse and His Boy | 1954 | Buy |
| The Magician’s Nephew | 1955 | Buy |
| The Last Battle | 1956 | Buy |
C.S. Lewis was a medieval literature scholar at Oxford who wrote children’s fantasy, Christian apologetics, and science fiction. He’s best known for The Chronicles of Narnia, but he also wrote The Screwtape Letters, Mere Christianity, and the Space Trilogy. His friend J.R.R. Tolkien criticized Narnia for mixing mythologies too freely. Lewis didn’t care.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe appeared in 1950. Four children discover a wardrobe that leads to Narnia, a land ruled by a cruel White Witch where it’s always winter but never Christmas. The allegory is obvious: Aslan the lion is Christ, his sacrifice and resurrection unmistakable. Lewis made no attempt to hide it.
The books were published out of internal chronological order. Modern editions often reorder them, starting with The Magician’s Nephew. Lewis himself said publication order didn’t matter, but most readers who grew up with the series encountered the wardrobe first. There’s something lost in starting with Narnia’s creation rather than its discovery.
Lewis died in 1963, the same day as John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley. His books have sold over 100 million copies. Disney and Walden Media produced three film adaptations between 2005 and 2010. Netflix announced a new adaptation in 2018, though development has been slow.
Lewis converted from atheism to Christianity as an adult, partly through conversations with Tolkien. That journey informed everything he wrote afterward, from children’s books to theological essays.