If you were going to read the Narnia Chronicles for the first time, what order would you read them? The original publishing order or the newer chronological “official” order? The two orders are:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)
Prince Caspian(1951)
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
The Silver Chair (1953)
The Horse and His Boy (1954)
The Magicians Nephew(1955)
The Last Battle (1956)
Or:
The Magicians 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
The first time I read them in the original order. I’ve tended to switch it up on rereads.
I think reading in the original order adds something, but, since I can’t, of course, know what it’s like reading them the first time in chrono-order. I can’t say for sure.
But TLtWatW stands better on its own than the rest of the series, so I’d start there.
I read the series several times as a kid, in both orders, although I had to read them all in the original order first to figure them out chronologically. Maybe for that reason, if I were having a child read them, I’d probably stick to the original order, the first you listed. “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” is a book with a powerful message of sacrifice and redempton. All the book’s have moral messages, but none quite so powerful as the first one. I also think the deeper points of “The Last Battle” would be lost on anyone much younger than their mid-teens, so it should probably always be read last.
The way the stories are distributed in the Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter books show some similarities. I suspect in both cases the authors never set out to write a whole series, and only did so because of sheer market demand. The first books written in the series are both teeming with characterization and detail, while the later ones rely more on plot and action.
Definitely read in the orginal published order. I remember, when I was a kid, getting to *The Magician’s Nephew * and being so excited about finding out the backstory to some of the characters in the earlier in the books. The chronological order takes the joy out of it.
Think of it this way: would Pulp Fiction or Memento “make more sense” in chronological order? Maybe, but what would you lose in the process? Flashbacks and non-linear narratives are written that way for a reason, IMO. JMO, YMMV.
Definitely the published order. As Rubystreak says, chronologically isn’t always the ‘right’ way. I feel like The Magician’s Nephew, for example, would be pretty empty without knowing already that we’re talking about the beginning of the Narnia we know from TLtWatW. Jadis, the Empress of Charn makes no sense at all unless we recognize her as the same ilk as the Snow Queen in Wardrobe.
I’d never tell anyone to read the Silmarillion before Lord of the Rings, either.
Interestingly, now I never read Narnia as a series, I just grab whichever story I feel like reading at the time.
Inconclusive- his stepson & estate executor Douglas Gresham cites a CSL letter recommending the chronological order, but I think there are other CSL comments recommending the publication order.
A previous discussion here made the definitive case- noting that more people who start with MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW give up on the rest than those who start with LION.
Now that I’ve read the whole series, I find I read them like Eonwe does. I had only read Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader before, so I had no attachment to the published order. My set is quite new and is in chronological order. I like it that way, partly, I’m sure, because that’s how I first read them.
Definitely in the original published order. The entire point and effectiveness of The Magician’s Nephew is the collection of allusions and references. It’s a whole book of wink-wink, nudge-nudge to the reader.
Yet another vote for the original published order. I can’t imagine The Magician’s Nephew being nearly as enjoyable if read first, without knowing so much of the history of Narnia it is setting up. And The Horse and His Boy works much better as a trip back to see old friends, rather than a follow-up to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Actually, the characters at the end of Lion don’t really jibe with the way they’re presented in Horse (thank goodness), and reading them in quick succession would make that effect even more noticeable.
The story maybe makes more sense if you go in chronological order, but you lose a lot of the charm and magic that way, especially in the first two books. If you read them in order of publication, The Magician’s Nephew is full of “Aha!” moments. It comes across as adding depth and richness to a world you already know and love, and the creation story puts the reader in a more spiritually-oriented mindset for The Last Battle.
If you read them in chronological order, you already know about the wardrobe and what’s likely to happen before you even being The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. TMN comes across as just a story, nothing more, and TLTWATW is stripped of that sense of wondery and mystery and magic that adds so much to Lucy’s first trip. Instead of “Oh wow, what’s all this about?” you’re thinking, “Eh, she’s going to Narnia.”
In short, either way is acceptable, but the original order is more satisfying.
> The way the stories are distributed in the Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry
> Potter books show some similarities. I suspect in both cases the authors never
> set out to write a whole series, and only did so because of sheer market
> demand. The first books written in the series are both teeming with
> characterization and detail, while the later ones rely more on plot and action.
Clearly J. K. Rowling intended to write a series when she started the first book. I believe she told her publisher that it was a series, and she’s said that she wrote the last chapter of the last book a long time ago. In any case, it’s clearly set up as a series with definite periods for each book (one for each school year from age 11 to age 17) and unresolved issues at the end of each book.
C. S. Lewis didn’t intend to write further books when he wrote The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. After finishing it, he found himself in the same position as before he wrote the first book. He had some images that might fit into a book. It soon became clear that it was another children’s book and it fit into the same world as the first book.
Of course, if either the first Harry Potter book or The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe hadn’t sold well, the publisher might have refused to publish a second book. In neither case though did the publisher have to force the author to write a second book. In both cases the author had the idea for a second book and was happy to write it.
