But in that very same passage, Lewis also says “Perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them.” It doesn’t sound to me like he really has a very strong opinion one way or the other.
So I take him at his word, and read them in the order they were published.
I certainly do not take Lewis being polite to a little kid as any sort of definitive statement on which order he wanted his books to be read in, full stop, end of story.
Edited to add: If you want to get into issues of “canon,” then no, Lewis’s private letter is not canon. The canon is the books themselves, not other stuff that Lewis said about the books later.
Authors are authoritative about how their works are written, including the order that they’re written. Readers are authoritative about how works are read, including the order that they’re read. An author simply has no authority about how, when, what readers read.
They can say the author is wrong the exact same way we can say that you or anyone else is wrong. They aren’t saying that the author’s view is invalid, just that they find it less persuasive. In fact, it’s so much less persuasive that a lot of people think that Lewis, when saying “chronological order”, meant the real world chronological order. I can’t remember who, but that is the theory of one person who knew Lewis well. (Though obviously not his stepson, who is the one who cemented the current official ordering.)
As for why? Read the books. If you read Magician’s Nephew, it very clearly references things that were mentioned in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but not the other way around. Stuff presented as new in Wardrobe are explained in Nephew. For example, there’s no mystery of why there’s a lamppost in the ground if you read Nephew first. You don’t have the big reveal that Jadis is in fact the White Queen (who is never named in the Wardrobe.) Hell, the end of Nephew explains how the wardrobe works, completely destroying the surprise of when Lucy winds up in Narnia for the first time.
Magicians Nephew was just so obviously written as a prequel that it’s hard to argue that in-universe chronological order makes sense. And that’s without the wrinkle that A Horse and His Boy occurs entirely during a time skip in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, starring completely different characters.
I would say that the authority to say how to read something (e.g. what order to read a series) belongs to those who are already thoroughly familiar with it, which includes but is not limited to the author.
In addition to what’s been said upthread, asking only the author of a book series about chronological order doesn’t take into account the thoughts of the editor, who may have a better grasp of flow than the author.
Going off the wikipedia entry, though I don’t think they’re doing that. This is the part that inspired your OP, yes?
In the 2005 HarperCollins adult editions of the books, the publisher cites this letter to assert Lewis’s preference for the numbering they adopted by including this notice on the copyright page:
Although The Magician’s Nephew was written several years after C. S. Lewis first began The Chronicles of Narnia, he wanted it to be read as the first book in the series. HarperCollins is happy to present these books in the order in which Professor Lewis preferred.
Paul Ford cites several scholars who have weighed in against this view,[23] and continues, “most scholars disagree with this decision and find it the least faithful to Lewis’s deepest intentions”. Scholars and readers who appreciate the original order believe that Lewis was simply being gracious to his youthful correspondent and that he could have changed the books’ order in his lifetime had he so desired.
My read on that is not that they’re disagreeing with Lewis himself, but that they’re disagreeing with Harper-Collins that a letter he wrote to a ten year old fan amounts to anything more than being polite to a young boy. If he’d written it in the foreword to a new edition of the book, or in an essay published in a literary magazine, or even a letter written to a peer, that would be authoritative, but this is the equivalent of using Robert Downey, Jr. dressing up as Iron Man for a Make-a-Wish video as a starting point to deconstructing Avengers: Endgame.
I’ve had a reviewer tell me that I should make myself more aware of my own work. Being a double blind review process, of course, they could know possibly know that I’m the lead author of the work they’re telling me to learn more about. When I read it my immediate thought was “Of course, I know him. He’s me.” I should also say after thinking of the Obi Wan line my next thought was “Wow. Somebody knows my work.” LOL
That isn’t a clear statement from Lewis. It’s just him saying that it was O.K. for Krieg to read them in that order. It wasn’t until long after Lewis’s death that the publisher decided to change the order.
Yeah. The people who are supposedly criticizing Lewis are saying that the way he wrote the books and the way Krieg and everyone else from that era initially read them is fine, while Harper Collins is “supporting” Lewis by saying implicitly that he wrote the books wrong.
What does “proper” mean here? If it means “most satisfying”, it seems reasonable that otherw might have a better insight than the author, who has never read the books in the sense of discovering the story.
If “proper” means “appropriate” or “correct”, I am not sure that really even exists.
I remember the phrase “intentional fallacy” from a college literature class. The phrase means that it’s a fallacy to believe that the author’s intentions should limit the interpretation of the work, and unintended meanings are not uncommon.
Many examples of the “intentional fallacy” can be found by looking at Shakespeare. For example, he had no intention of referencing Freudian psychology in his work, but that doesn’t mean that we should be limited by his intention and not make any connections with Freud in reading his work
I also heard the story of Robert Frost being asked about his poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and the last lines: “But I have promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep / And miles to go before I sleep.” Many readers believe that the last line is a reference to death, but when asked about this reading, Frost said that he never thought about death when writing the poem. But if we were to follow the “intentional fallacy” and let ourselves be limited by Frost’s intention, that would be an artificial limit on the possible meanings of the poem.
That said, I strongly prefer reading the Chronicles of Narnia in publication order. I agree with @BigT; it doesn’t make sense to me to read The Magician’s Nephew first, especially considering its references to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
WW1, the one that went on for 4 years vs a battler that occurred over 1 day? A single battle vs a long war?
WW1, where pretty much every side was “the bad guys”, vs Middle Earth?
The rational was to get ahold of the greatest treasure in all Middle Earth. And for a while there were no clear sides- until the orcs arrived, the mutual enemy. A battle not about territory, but 100% about loot.
There really is no comparison.
I concur.
Mark Twain was right:
NOTICE
PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
I should also say after thinking of the Obi Wan line my next thought was “Wow. Somebody knows my work.” LOL