The Magician's Nephew

The Magician's Nephew
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
Author(s)	C.S. Lewis
Illustrator	Pauline Baynes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	The Chronicles of Narnia
Subject(s)	[The making of Narnia]
Genre(s)	Fantasy, Children's Literature, Fiction
Publisher	The Bodley Head
Publication date	2 May 1955
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	202 pp
Preceded by	The Horse and his Boy
Followed by	The Last Battle

The Magician's Nephew is a fantasy novel for children written by C. S. Lewis. It was the sixth book published in his The Chronicles of Narnia series, but is the first in the chronology of the Narnia novels' fictional universe. Thus it is an early example of a prequel.

The novel is initially set in London in 1900. The principal characters are two pre-adolescent children, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, Digory being the younger Professor Kirke from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The pair have adventures after being transported to other worlds by the sorcerous experiments of Digory's Uncle Andrew. It features the genesis of Narnia and the introduction of Jadis (aka The White Witch), antagonist of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, into the newly created Narnia. While begun shortly after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it took Lewis nearly six years to complete, and includes several autobiographical elements from Lewis's own life. It explores a number of themes with general moral and Christian implications including atonement, original sin, temptation, and the order of nature.

This book is dedicated to "the Kilmer family".

Plot summary

The story begins in London during the summer of 1900. Two children, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, meet while playing in the adjacent gardens of a row of terraced houses. They decide to explore the attic connecting the houses, but take the wrong door and surprise Digory's Uncle Andrew in his study. Uncle Andrew tricks Polly into touching a yellow magic ring, causing her to vanish. He then explains to Digory that he has been dabbling in magic, and that the rings allow travel between one world and another. He persuades Digory, effectively through blackmail, to take another yellow ring to follow wherever Polly has gone, and two green rings so that both can return.

Digory finds himself transported to a sleepy woodland with an almost narcotic effect; he finds Polly nearby. The woodland is filled with pools. Digory and Polly surmise that the world is not really a proper world at all but a "Wood between the Worlds," similar to the attic that links their rowhouses back in England, and that each pool leads to a separate universe. They decide to explore a different world before returning to England, and jump into one of the nearby pools. They then find themselves in a desolate abandoned city of the ancient world of Charn. Inside the ruined palace, they discover statuesque figures of Charn's former kings and queens, which degenerate from the fair and wise to the cowardly and cruel. They find a bell with a hammer, with these words:

Make your choice, adventurous Stranger
Strike the bell and bide the danger
Or wonder, till it drives you mad
What would have followed if you had

Despite protests from Polly, Digory rings the bell. This awakens the last of the statues, a witch named Jadis, who, to avoid defeat in battle, had deliberately killed every living thing in Charn by speaking a "Deplorable Word." As the only survivor left in her world, she placed herself in an enchanted sleep that would only be broken by someone ringing the bell.

The children realize Jadis's evil nature and attempt to flee, but she follows them back to England by clinging to them as they clutch their rings. In England, she dismisses Uncle Andrew as a mere dabbler in magic. She discovers that her magic does not work in England but she still has her strength. She enslaves Uncle Andrew and orders him to fetch her a chariot, so she can set about conquering Earth. They leave, and she returns standing atop a hansom with no driver, followed by a fire engine. There is a collision at the front door of the Kirke house, and police arrive. Jadis breaks off a rod from a nearby lamp-post and brandishes it as a weapon.

Polly and Digory grab her and put on their magic rings to take her out of their world, dragging with them Uncle Andrew, Frank the cab-driver, and Frank's horse, since all were touching one another when Digory and Polly grabbed their rings. In the Wood between the Worlds they jump into a pool, hoping it leads back to Charn. Instead they stumble into a dark void that Jadis recognizes as a world not yet created. They then all witness the creation of a new world by the lion Aslan, who brings various entities, stars, plants, and animals, into existence as he sings. Jadis attempts to kill Aslan with the iron bar from the lamp-post, but it deflects harmlessly off of him and begins to sprout into a new lamp-post "tree." Jadis flees.

Aslan gives some animals the power of speech, commanding them to use it for justice and merriment. Digory's uncle is frozen with fear and unable to communicate with the talking animals, who mistake him for a kind of tree. Aslan confronts Digory with his responsibility for bringing Jadis into his young world, and tells Digory he must atone by helping to protect Narnia from her evil. Aslan transforms the cabbie's horse into a winged horse named Fledge, and Digory and Polly fly on him to a garden high in the mountains. Digory's task is to take an apple from a tree in this garden, and plant it in Narnia. In the garden Digory finds a sign reading:

Come in my gold gates or not at all
Take of my fruit for others or forbear
For those who steal or those who climb my wall
Shall find their heart's desire and find despair

Digory picks one of the apples for his mission, but has to resist temptation to eat one for himself after he smells the apples. As he prepares to leave he is shocked to see the witch Jadis. She has eaten one of the magic apples, thereby becoming immortal, but her face is now "deadly white;" Digory begins to understand what the last line in the sign means. She tempts Digory to either eat an apple himself and join her in immortality, or steal one back to Earth to heal his dying mother. Digory resists temptation, knowing that his mother would never condone theft. However the clincher comes when the Witch suggests he leave Polly behind, not knowing Polly can get away by her own ring. At this, Digory sees through the Witch's ploy. Foiled, the Witch departs for the North. Digory returns to Narnia with an apple, which is planted in Narnian soil. A new tree springs up, which Aslan says will repel the Witch for centuries to come. Aslan informs Digory that a stolen apple would have healed his mother, but at a terrible price: anyone who steals the apples gets their heart's desire, but it comes in a form that makes it unlikeable. In the case of the Witch, she now has her heart's desire for immortality, but it only means eternal misery because of her evil heart. Moreover, the magic apples are now a horror to her, which is why the tree repels her. With Aslan's permission, Digory then takes an apple from the new tree to heal his mother. Aslan promises the apple will now bring joy. Aslan returns Digory, Polly, and Uncle Andrew to England; Frank and his wife, Helen (transported from England by Aslan) stay to rule Narnia as its first King and Queen.

Digory's apple restores his dying mother to health, and he and Polly remain lifelong friends. Uncle Andrew reforms and gives up magic but he still enjoys bragging about his adventures with the Witch on their tour of London. Digory plants the apple's core in the back yard of his aunt's home in London. Years later the tree that grows from it blows down in a storm. Digory has its wood made into a wardrobe, thus linking the story to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which Digory has become the old professor in whose country house Lucy Pevensie finds the wardrobe and the way into Narnia.

Chapters

1. The Wrong Door
2. Digory and His Uncle
3. The Wood Between the Worlds
4. The Bell and the Hammer
5. The Deplorable Word
6. The Beginning of Uncle Andrew's Troubles
7. What Happened at the Front Door
8. The Fight at the Lamppost
9. The Founding of Narnia
10. The First Joke and Other Matters
11. Digory and His Uncle Are Both in Trouble
12. Strawberry's Adventure
13. An Unexpected Meeting
14. The Planting of the Tree
15. The End of This Story and the Beginning of All the Others

Principal characters

• Digory Kirke: The boy who becomes the Professor Kirke who appears in other books of the series.
• Polly Plummer: Digory's friend, who lives next door.
• Andrew Ketterley: Digory's uncle, a minor magician.
• Jadis: Queen of Charn, who becomes the White Witch appearing in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Writing

Lewis had originally intended only to write the one Narnia novel, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. However, when Roger Lancelyn Green asked him how a lamp post came to be standing in the midst of Narnian woodland, Lewis was intrigued enough by the question to attempt to find an answer by writing The Magician's Nephew, which features a younger version of Professor Kirke from the first novel.^[1]

The Magician's Nephew seems to have been the most challenging Narnia novel for Lewis to write. The other six Chronicles of Narnia were written between 1948 and 1953, The Magician's Nephew was written over a six year period between 1949 and 1954. He started in the summer of 1949 after finishing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but came to a halt after producing 26 pages of manuscript and did not resume work until two years later. This may be as a result of the autobiographical aspects of the novel, as it reflects a number of incidents and parallels very close to his own experiences.^[2]

He returned to The Magician's Nephew late in 1950, after completing The Silver Chair. He managed to finish close to three quarters of the novel, and then halted work once again after Roger Green, to whom Lewis showed all his writing at the time, suggested there was a structural problem in the story. Finally he returned to the novel in 1953, after finishing The Last Battle in the spring of that year and completed early in 1954.^[3]

Lewis originally titled the novel "Polly and Digory"; his publisher changed it to The Magician's Nephew.^[4]

The Lefay Fragment

The original opening of the novel differs greatly from the published version, and was abandoned by Lewis. It is now known as 'The Lefay Fragment', and is named after Mrs Lefay, Digory's fairy godmother, who is mentioned in the final version as Uncle Andrew's godmother, a less benevolent user of magic, who bequeathed him the box of dust used to create two magic rings.^[5]

In the Lefay Fragment, Digory is born with the ability to speak to trees and animals, and lives with an Aunt Gertrude, a former school mistress with an officious, bullying nature, who has ended up as a Government minister after a lifetime of belligerent brow-beating of others. Whenever his aunt is absent, Digory finds solace with the animals and trees, including a talking squirrel named Pattertwig. Polly enters the story as a girl next door who is unable to understand the speech of non-human creatures. She wants to build a raft to explore a stream which leads to an underground world. Digory helps construct the raft, but ends up sawing a branch from a talking tree necessary to complete it, in order not to lose face with Polly. This causes him to lose his supernatural powers of speech. The following day he is visited by his godmother Mrs Lefay who knows that Digory has lost his abilities and gives him a card with the address of a furniture shop which she instructs him to visit. At this point the fragment ends.^[6]

Pattertwig and Aunt Gertrude do not appear in the final version of the novel. Pattertwig does, however, appear as a Narnian creature in Prince Caspian, and Aunt Gertrude is the principal of the experimental school in The Silver Chair.^[7]

Authenticity

Some doubt has been cast on the authenticity of the Lefay Fragment, as the handwriting in the manuscript differs in some ways from Lewis' usual style, and the writing is not of a similar calibre to his other work. Also in August 1963 Lewis had given instructions to Douglas Gresham to destroy all his unfinished or incomplete fragments of manuscript when his rooms at Magdelene College Cambridge were being cleaned out, following his resignation from the college early in the month.^[8]

Autobiographical elements

There are a number of aspects of The Magician's Nephew which closely follow Lewis' own life. Both Digory and Lewis were children in the early 1900s, both wanted a pony, and both were faced with the death of their mothers in childhood. Digory is separated from his father, who is in India, and misses him. Lewis was schooled in England after his mother’s death, while his father remained in Ireland. He also had a brother in India. Lewis was a voracious reader when a child, Digory is also, and both are better with books than with numbers. Digory (and Polly) struggle with sums when trying to work out how far they must travel along the attic space to explore an abandoned house, Lewis failed the maths entrance exam for Oxford University. Lewis remembered rainy summer days from his youth and Digory is faced with the same woe in the novel. Additionally Digory becomes a professor when he grows up, who takes in evacuated children during World War II.^[9]

The character of Andrew Ketterley also closely resembles Robert Capron, a schoolmaster at Wynyard School which Lewis attended with his brother, whom Lewis suggested during his teens would make a good model for a villain in a future story. Ketterley resembles Capron in his age, appearance and behaviour.^[10]

Style

The Magician's Nephew is written in a lighter tone than other Chronicles of Narnia books, in particular The Last Battle, which was published after. It frequently makes use of humour; this perhaps reflects the sense of looking back at an earlier part of the century with affection, and Lewis as a middle-age man recalling his childhood during those years. There are a number of humorous references to life in the old days, in particular school life. Humorous exchanges also take place between Narnian animals. Jadis' attempt to conquer London is portrayed as more comical than threatening, and further humour derives from the contrast between the evil empress and Edwardian London and its social mores, and her mistaking bumbling Andrew Ketterley for a powerful sorcerer. This recalls the style of Edith Nesbit's children's books.^[11] Lewis was fond of these books, which he read in childhood, a number were set in the same period and The Magician's Nephew has some apparent references or homages to them.^[4]

Reading order

The Magician's Nephew was originally published as the sixth book in the Narnia Chronicles. Most reprintings of the novels until the 1980s also reflected the order of original publication. In 1980 HarperCollins published the series in order of chronological of the events in the novels, which meant The Magician's Nephew was numbered as first in the series. HarperCollins, which had previously published editions of the novels outside the United States, also acquired the rights to publish the novels in that country in 1994 and used this sequence in the uniform worldwide edition published in that year.^[12]

Lewis appeared to have given his blessing to this sequence of reading the novels. In a letter dated 23 April 1957, a young fan, Laurence Krieg wrote to Lewis following the publication of The Magician's Nephew. He asked for Lewis to adjudicate between his views of the correct sequence of reading the novels — according to the sequence of events, with The Magician's Nephew being placed first, and that of his mother, who thought the order of publication was more appropriate. Lewis wrote back, appearing to support the younger Krieg's views, although he did point out that the views of the author may not be the best guidance, and that perhaps it would not matter what order they were read in.^[13]

However this approach may have some effect upon Lewis' strategies for drawing readers into the world of Narnia. An example is Lucy Pevensie's discovery of the wardrobe, Narnia and a mysterious lamp post in the woods in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which creates a sense of suspense about an unknown land she is discovering for the first time. This would be affected if the reader has already been introduced to Narnia in The Magician's Nephew and discovered the origins of Narnia, the wardrobe and the lamp post. Indeed, the narrative of the The Magician's Nephew appears to assume a reader has already read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and is now being shown its beginnings.^[14]

Themes and interpretations

Parallels with Biblical Genesis

Lewis suggested that he did not directly intend to write his Narnia stories as Christian tales, but that these aspects appeared subconsciously as he wrote, although the books did become Christian as they progressed. He thought that the tales were not direct representations or allegory, but that they might evoke or remind readers of Biblical stories.^[15] In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan is a Christ-like figure who suffers a death of atonement and returns to life in a similar way to Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.^[16] The Magician's Nephew has similar biblical allusions, reflecting aspects of The Book of Genesis such as the creation, original sin and temptation.^[17]

Parallels with events in Genesis include the forbidden fruit represented by an Apple of Life. Queen Jadis resembles the Biblical Satan, as Aslan describes her as the first evil brought into the Narnia and Jadis later tempts Digory to eat one of the forbidden apples in the garden, as does Satan, disguised as a serpent, tempt Adam and Eve into eating a forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Unlike Adam and Eve however, Digory rejects Jadis's offer.

While the creation of Narnia closely echoes the creation of the Earth in the Book of Genesis, there are a number of important differences. In Narnia the fall takes place before the creation and human beings are not created in Narnia by Aslan, they are brought into Narnia from our own world. Unlike Genesis, where only human beings created in the image of God are given a soul, animals and half-human half-animal creatures such as Fauns and Satyrs and even trees and watercourses are given souls and the power of rational thought and speech. This appears to suggest Lewis combined his Christian worldview with his fondness for nature, myth and fairy tales.^[18]

Parallels may also be found in Lewis' other writings. Jadis' references to "reasons of State", and her claim to own the people of Charn and be beyond morality, represent the eclipse of the medieval Christian belief in natural law by the political concept of sovereignty, as embodied first in royal absolutism and then in modern dictatorships.^[19] Uncle Andrew represents the Faustian element in the origins of modern science.^[20]

The Holy Spirit and the Breath of Life

On a number of occasions in the Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan uses his breath to give strength to characters, demonstrating his benevolent power or bringing life. He specifically does so in The Magician's Nephew when a 'long warm breath' gives life to Narnia. Lewis used the symbol of the breath to represent the Holy Spirit also known as the Holy Ghost. Both 'spirit' and 'ghost' are translations of the word for breath in Hebrew and Greek. The flash from the stars when the Narnian animals are given the ability to talk also most probably represents the Holy Spirit^[21] or "breath of life" of Genesis chapter 2, as well as (possibly) the scholastic concept of the divine active intellect which inspires human beings with rationality.^[22]

Nature and a natural order

The Magician's Nephew suggests two opposing approaches to nature, a good approach associated with Aslan as creator and an evil approach associated with human deviation from divine intentions and the harmony of a natural order. On the one hand there is the beauty of Aslan's creation of Narnia, which is suggested as having a natural order by the use of musical harmony to bring landscapes and living things into being. There is also a distinct order to the process of creation, from earth to plants to animal, which evokes the concept of The Great Chain of Being. Lewis himself was a strong believer in the intrinsic value of nature for itself, rather than as a resource to be exploited. This is perhaps reflected in how Aslan also gives speech to spiritual aspects of nature, such naiads in the water and dryads in the trees. Andrew Ketterley and Jadis represent an opposite, evil approach of bending the forces of nature to human will for the purpose of self gain. They see nature solely as a resource to use for their plans and thus disturb and destroy the natural order.^[23]

Influences on The Magician's Nephew

Edith Nesbit

Lewis read Edith Nesbit's children's books as a child and was greatly fond of them.^[4] The Magician's Nephew refers to these books in the opening of the novel as though their events were true, mentioning the setting of the piece as being when "Mr. Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road". The Bastables were children who appeared in a number of Edith Nesbit's stories.^[24] In addition to being set in the same period and location as several of Nesbit's stories, The Magician's Nephew also and has some similarities with Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet (1906). This novel focuses on four children living in London who discover a magic amulet, their father is away and their mother is ill, as is the case with Digory. They also manage to transport the queen of ancient Babylon to London and she is the cause of a riot; a very similar event takes place in The Magician's Nephew when Polly and Digory transport Queen Jadis to London and she also causes a similar disturbance.^[4]

The creation of Narnia

The creation of Narnia strongly reflects the Book of Genesis, but may also have been influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, which also contains a creation scene driven by the effect of music.^[25] Some of the details of the creation of Narnia, such as the emergence of animals from the ground, and the way they shake earth from their bodies are also similar to John Milton's Paradise Lost, and may also have been inspired by descriptions of the processes of nature in The seventh book of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.^[26]

Morgan Le Fay and Pandora's Box

Lewis greatly enjoyed stories of Arthurian legend and wrote poetry about this world. Mrs Lefay visits Digory in the The Lefay Fragment, and becomes Andrew Ketterley's nefarious godmother in the finished novel. She gives Ketterley a box from Atlantis containing the dust from which he constructs the rings Digory and Polly use to travel between worlds. Both Lefays are allusions to Morgan Le Fay, a powerful sorceress in a number of versions of King Arthur's tales, who is often portrayed as evil. The box itself is also evocative of Pandora's box from Greek myth, which also contained dangerous secrets.^[27]

The Atlantis legend

The box containing the dust from which the rings to travel between world originated in Atlantis.^[27] Both Lewis and his close friend J.R.R. Tolkien were fascinated with the Atlantis legend. The world of Charn was destroyed by Jadis when speaking The Deplorable Word, a form of knowledge ancient Charnian scholars feared for its destructive potential. Upon publication of The Magician's Nephew, a number of commentators believed Lewis was referring to the use of the atomic bomb at the close of World War II, which was less than a decade prior. However it is perhaps more likely that Lewis was echoing the destruction of Atlantis, which was also destroyed by the forces of evil and arrogance.^[28]

Adaptations

Film adaptation

Walden Media, having already made movie adaptations of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 20th Century Fox had confirmed that The Magician's Nephew will be the next film adaptation instead of The Silver Chair.

20th Century Fox, Walden, and the C. S. Lewis Estate finally decided that The Magician's Nephew would be the basis for the next movie following the release of the 2010 film The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.^[29][30][31] However, in October 2011, Douglas Gresham confirmed that Walden Media's contract with the C. S. Lewis estate had expired, and any production of a future film was on hold indefinitely.^[32][33]

Theatrical adaption

Aurand Harris was a well-known American playwright for children, whose works are among the most performed in that medium. He wrote 36 plays for children including an adaption of The Magician's Nephew.^[34] The play was first performed on May 26, 1984 by the Department of Drama, University of Texas, Austin and staged at the B. Iden Payne Theatre. A musical score by William Penn was written for use with productions of the play.^[35]

The playscript for Magician's Nephew was written by Erina Caradus and first performed in 2005.^[36]

References

1. ^ Downing, David C. (2005). Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. Jossey-Bass. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-7879-7890-7. 
2. ^ Downing, David C. (2005). Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. Jossey-Bass. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-7879-7890-7. 
3. ^ Duriez, Colin (2004). The Life of C.S. Lewis. InterVarsity Press. p. 47. ISBN 0830832076. 
4. ^ ^{a b c d} Lindskoog, Kathryn Ann (1997). Journey Into Narnia: C. S. Lewis's Tales Explored. Hope Publishing House. p. 87. ISBN 0932727891. 
5. ^ Downing, David C. (2005). Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. Jossey-Bass. pp. 36–9. ISBN 978-0-7879-7890-7. 
6. ^ Downing, David C. (2005). Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. Jossey-Bass. pp. 36–7. ISBN 978-0-7879-7890-7. 
7. ^ Downing, David C. (2005). Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. Jossey-Bass. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-7879-7890-7. 
8. ^ Lindskoog, Kathryn Ann (2001). Sleuthing C.S. Lewis: more Light in the shadowlands. Mercer University Press. pp. 111–12. ISBN 0865547300. 
9. ^ Hinten, Marvin D. (2005). The Keys to the Chronicles: Unlocking the Symbols of C.S. Lewis's Narnia. B&H Publishing Group. pp. 68–9. ISBN 0805440283. 
10. ^ Downing, David C. (2005). Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. Jossey-Bass. pp. 57–9. ISBN 978-0-7879-7890-7. 
11. ^ Myers, Doris T. (1998). C. S. Lewis in Context. Kent State University Press. pp. 174. ISBN 0873386175. 
12. ^ Schakel, Peter J. (2005). The way into Narnia: a reader's guide. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 13–16. ISBN 0802829848. 
13. ^ Schakel, Peter J. (2005). The way into Narnia: a reader's guide. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 17–18. ISBN 0802829848. 
14. ^ Schakel, Peter J. (2005). The way into Narnia: a reader's guide. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 19–21. ISBN 0802829848. 
15. ^ Sammons, Martha C. (2004). A Guide Through Narnia. Regent College Publishing. pp. 128–9. ISBN 1573833088. 
16. ^ Ryken, Leland; Lamp Mead, Marjorie (2005). A reader's guide through the wardrobe: exploring C.S. Lewis's classic story. InterVarsity Press. p. 165. ISBN 0830832890. 
17. ^ Vaus, Will; Gresham, Douglas (2004). Mere theology: a guide to the thought of C.S. Lewis. InterVarsity Press. pp. 76–7. ISBN 083082782X. 
18. ^ Downing, David C. (2005). Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. Jossey-Bass. pp. 73–4. ISBN 978-0-7879-7890-7. 
19. ^ See chapter 1 of Lewis' History of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century.
20. ^ See The Abolition of Man.
21. ^ Colbert, David (2005). The Magical Worlds of Narnia. McArthur & Company. pp. 81–3. ISBN 1552785416. 
22. ^ In the view of Avicenna and Maimonides, intellectual inspiration descends through ten angelic emanations, of which the first nine are the intelligences of the heavenly spheres and the tenth is the Active Intellect.
23. ^ Myers, Doris T. (1998). C. S. Lewis in Context. Kent State University Press. pp. 169–70. ISBN 0873386175. 
24. ^ Hinten, Marvin D. (2005). The Keys to the Chronicles: Unlocking the Symbols of C.S. Lewis's Narnia. B&H Publishing Group. pp. 68. ISBN 0805440283. 
25. ^ Downing, David C. (2005). Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. Jossey-Bass. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-7879-7890-7. 
26. ^ Myers, Doris T. (1998). C. S. Lewis in Context. Kent State University Press. pp. 170–1. ISBN 0873386175. 
27. ^ ^{a b} Colbert, David (2005). The Magical Worlds of Narnia. McArthur & Company. pp. 77–8. ISBN 1552785416. 
28. ^ Colbert, David (2005). The Magical Worlds of Narnia. McArthur & Company. pp. 91–2. ISBN 1552785416. 
29. ^ Narnia 4 Will Be 'Magician's Nephew,' Not 'Silver Chair'
30. ^ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Most Inspiring Faith, Family and Values Movie of 2011
31. ^ 'Narnia': Walden, Fox in discussions on The Magician's Nephew
32. ^ Gresham Confirms: Walden’s Contract Expired
33. ^ Walden Media’s Option for a Fourth Narnia film Expires
34. ^ Jennings, Coleman A.; Sendak, Maurice (2005). Theatre for Young Audiences. Macmillan. pp. 46–7. ISBN 0312337140. 
35. ^ Harris, Aurand; Lewis, C.S.; Penn, William A. (1984). The magician's nephew: a dramatization. Dramatic Publishing. pp. 4–5. ISBN 0871295415. 
36. ^ see http://narniaproductions.co.nz

External links

Narnia portal

• The Magician's Nephew publication history at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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