The Magician's Nephew

I came back to this book wanting to know where Narnia started. First published in 1955 by The Bodley Head, it runs to 221 pages in the first edition and stands as number six in publication order, though it stands first in chronological order inside Narnia. That double place can confuse new readers. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, listed as number one, came out in 1950 and gives us Professor Digory Kirke as a kind old host with a strange house. This book tells us who that old man was as a boy, how he saw a world made, how an evil queen entered that world, and how a piece of wood from another land became the wardrobe that later carries four children into snow. It is shorter and plainer than many modern fantasies, written for children, yet it holds a creation song, a dead city, a moral test about obedience, and a sick mother waiting at home in London.

Lewis tells the tale in a chatty voice, pausing to speak to the reader and to explain London life in 1900. Some readers love that warmth. Some find it preachy when lessons arrive with a clear label. Jadis also reads as simple in places, proud and cruel without much inner turn. Those limits are worth naming early. Still, the central images stay firm. Pools in a quiet wood. A bell in a ruined hall. A lion singing in the dark. An apple carried at great cost. A lamp burning where no street should be.

Two Children In London In 1900

Digory Kirke has come to live in London with his Aunt Letty and his Uncle Andrew Ketterley because his father serves abroad in India and his mother Mabel is gravely ill. It is the summer of 1900, a season of hot streets, hansom cabs, gas lamps, and strict manners. Next door lives Polly Plummer, a bright girl of much the same age, curious and careful in the way children are when adults give few clear answers. Their houses share a row of terraces with attics that join through a common space behind the chimney stacks. On a wet day when outdoor play fails, they decide to explore that roof space with candles, moving from house to house in search of hidden rooms.

They miscount doors and climb down into the study of Uncle Andrew. He is a tall thin man with a pointed beard, self pleased and fond of fine talk about will and power, though his sister finds him idle and sly. In his room stand cases of old coins, queer books, and a tray of rings in green and yellow that glow softly. Digory has heard that his uncle dabbles in what he calls high arts. Polly feels at once that the man is not safe. Uncle Andrew flatters Polly, steers her toward a yellow ring, and urges her to try it. The moment she touches it she vanishes from the room with a soft sound. Digory cries out. His uncle admits with cold pride that he has been sending guinea pigs out with the same rings and that they do not return. He wants a human report. He coaxes and then bullies Digory into following with a second set of rings, yellow to go and green to return, plus a promise that he must bring Polly back.

This opening matters because Lewis roots magic in ordinary London before any wonder appears. Digory is a boy worried about his mother, angry at his helplessness, eager to prove courage yet quick to blunder. Polly is sensible and loyal, often braver in judgment than Digory and ready to say no when curiosity pulls too hard. Uncle Andrew poses as a magician with old family talk of fairy blood, but in truth he is a dabbler who read old rules and paid others to take risks. Lewis has little mercy for him, though the book never lets us forget that his selfish test put two children in danger.

The Wood Between The Worlds

The yellow rings do not carry the children to one fixed place. They lift them up and out into the Wood between the Worlds, a still forest filled with short trees, warm shade, and many pools as smooth as glass. Each pool serves as a mouth or door to a separate world. The air feels rich and drowsy, so full of life that it makes London noise seem thin by recall. Polly arrives first and has time to think. Digory follows soon after. Both wear the rings and learn by trial that green rings pull them out of a world while yellow rings send them onward. They mark the pool that leads back to England with care, and they agree that they should explore only a little before they return.

Lewis slows the pace here, and the slowing is wise. The Wood is not Narnia. It is a quiet hall between places, where time seems to rest and where no bird sings very loud. Polly wants to leave well alone. Digory, stung by shame over his uncle and keen to learn something worth telling, urges one small trial. They choose a pool that seems empty, put on green rings to leave the Wood, and drop down through dark water into brightness of another kind. That choice shapes all that follows. It shows the pattern of the whole book. A small push past a wise limit leads to ruin and also to knowledge. Polly warns. Digory insists. Both share blame and both share work to mend it.

The Wood also gives Lewis a plain way to show travel without long lore. Rings made from dust found in an old box carry the wearer where the dust longs to return. Later Aslan will speak of this dust as bits from the Wood itself, drawn to its home pool. Dust wants to go home, and it drags fingers along. To jump into a new pool takes nerve, since no one knows how deep the new world runs. Polly and Digory hold hands at the edge and jump together.

Charn And The Bell In The Dead City

The pool they choose opens on Charn, a vast dead city under a dying red sun. The air smells cold and old. The sky hangs low. Palace walls rise in long lines, empty courts lie cracked, and no bird moves. Polly and Digory find a great hall lined with seated images of kings and queens, row upon row, starting with kind faces and growing harder and prouder as the line goes on. At the far end stands a table with a small golden bell and a golden hammer, and beside it a verse that bids the stranger to strike and to take the adventure or to leave the bell alone and to wonder till death what would have followed. Digory reads pride into the words. Polly reads warning. They argue in whispers that echo under stone.

Digory strikes. The note rings sweet and deep and seems to wake the walls themselves. Dust falls. The last image, a tall queen with fierce beauty, rises from her seat as if sleep had held her rather than death. This is Jadis, last Queen of Charn. She speaks with calm command, learns their tongue by some old art, and tells her tale without shame. Her sister fought her for the throne. Jadis, facing defeat, spoke the Deplorable Word that kills all living things except the speaker, and so emptied her world to keep her crown. She then laid herself in enchanted sleep until someone should ring. Digory feels sick with guilt. Polly feels anger mixed with fear. Both see at once that curiosity has loosed a cruel power.

Jadis follows them back to London because Digory grabs her wrist at the moment he puts on his ring, and the rings carry people in contact. Her arrival in 1900 makes for broad comedy and real menace in turn. She towers over Uncle Andrew, mocks his pretended art, and treats London as a rude village to be ruled. She tears an iron bar from a lamp post in a scuffle, tries to turn crowds with pride, and shows strength far beyond human norm. Uncle Andrew preens, then cowers. A cabby named Frank and his horse Strawberry get drawn into the fray. A policeman tries order. A crowd gathers. Lewis uses these pages to show why she frightens. She is simple in motive, power and pride and scorn for common life. She does not scheme. She demands and strikes. That plain pride feeds her later winter in Narnia.

The Singing Of Aslan And The Making Of Narnia

Fearing scandal and harm, Polly and Digory try to send Jadis back by touch and rings. Uncle Andrew gets caught in the grip through greed and panic. Frank and Strawberry are caught too through brave attempts to help. The party does not land in Charn, for its pool has gone flat and dead now that its world has ended. They fall instead into darkness that feels alive, a void without stars where a voice begins to sing. The song comes first as soft notes, then as strong lines that seem to call light forward. Stars wake. A sun rises. Hills take shape. Light pours down valleys. Grass spreads. Trees rise and shake free. Rivers run bright. Animals stir from the earth as if the ground itself gives them up. This is Aslan making Narnia, a great lion with a deep voice, walking to and fro while he sings the land into form.

Lewis writes this as the heart of the book, and it earns that place. The song builds step by step, first light, then land, then plants, then beasts, and the children feel joy mixed with awe rather than mere surprise. Jadis hates the music and hurls the iron bar she brought from London at the Lion. It strikes him and falls harmless into soft turf, where it takes root and grows into a lamp post that burns with clear flame in the new wood. That bar matters more than it seems. It will stand for ages and greet later wanderers, including Lucy on her first night in snow. Lewis plants that link with quiet care, and readers who know the first published tale will feel the small shock of sense.

Aslan then gives speech and thought to chosen beasts and bids them guard and tend. He calls Frank, the cabby, who proves honest and kind, and sets him with his wife Helen as first King and Queen of Narnia. Strawberry is remade as Fledge, a flying horse with glad wings. Uncle Andrew hides behind trees and proves too mean to hear the song as song. To him it sounds like roaring. Lewis can sound preachy in these pages, praising plain folk while mocking a modern man of science and art. Still, the main force holds. Creation comes as gift, not as trick.

The Garden On The Hill And The Apple For His Mother

Aslan charges Digory with a task that tests sorrow more than strength. Jadis has fled into the new land and has eaten of a garden fruit that grants long life with a heavy heart. She will threaten Narnia for ages. To guard the young country, Aslan bids Digory fly north with Fledge to a walled garden on a hill and bring back an apple from its tree, eating none along the way. Polly goes too, loyal to the end though she owes no debt for Digory's bell strike beyond friendship. Their flight over new rivers and green slopes gives one of the sweetest passages in the book, high air and wide view, with Fledge strong and glad under them.

The garden stands behind high walls with gates of gold that face east. On the gate a verse warns all to take fruit for others, not for self, and bids each to leave what one does not need. Inside grows the tree with silver apples that smell of life. Digory picks one for his charge. Then Jadis steps from behind shade, changed by the stolen fruit she has already eaten, pale and restless, and tempts him with soft words. She urges him to eat and gain youth, or to carry the apple home to heal his mother in London and leave Narnia to its fate. She paints his mother dying while Aslan keeps healing for beasts. For a boy who loves his mother, the plea cuts deep. Digory shakes, weeps, and holds firm. He recalls Aslan's face and promise. He refuses, though refusal costs him hope in that hour.

He returns the apple. Aslan praises him without fuss. The apple is planted by the river, and in a night a tall tree rises to guard Narnia, called the Tree of Protection, whose scent keeps Jadis in dread at the northern wastes for many long years. Then Aslan turns to Digory with mercy and gives him a second apple from the same tree to carry home for his mother. Digory flies back through the Wood, wakes in London, and runs to his mother with the fruit. She eats and sleeps and mends. Digory buries the core in the back garden with his uncle's rings, and from it grows a great tree. Years later, when storms bring it down, Digory, now the Professor, has its wood made into a wardrobe. That wardrobe will stand in his country house and open once upon winter for four other children.

What Works And What Wears Thin

What works best is the making. The song in darkness, the beasts learning speech, the honest cabby made king, the flying horse finding joy, and the lamp post grown from London iron all feed straight into the later books. Polly and Digory also work as children rather than as small adults. They bicker, boast, fear, and make amends. The moral test at the garden works too, because Lewis lets Digory truly ache for his mother and still choose his charge.

What wears thin will show on a careful reread. Lewis steps forward often to explain and to judge, praising obedience while mocking Uncle Andrew at length. Those asides can feel preachy. Uncle Andrew starts as a real threat, a man willing to risk children for knowledge, then slides into long comic fear. Jadis reads as simple in motive from Charn to Narnia, proud and hungry for rule, with little change or doubt. None of this breaks the tale, but it dates parts of it.

Read order adds to the pleasure if you hold both orders in mind. As the sixth book in publication order, it answers old riddles. Why does a lamp stand in wild wood. Why does the Witch know our world and fear Aslan. Why does the Professor believe Lucy when others doubt. Read first in time, it spoils little and prepares much, though many still prefer to meet Narnia first in winter with Lucy, as Lewis first gave it. A boy plants, a lion sings, a queen flees, and a tree grows toward a spare room.