The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children written by C. S. Lewis. They present the adventures of children who play central roles in the unfolding history of the realm of Narnia, where some animals talk, magic is common, and good is fighting evil. The books are also known for their illustrations by Pauline Baynes. The stories illustrate aspects of Christianity in a way that is accessible to younger children.

Christian parallels

Although the books contain allusions to Christian ideas, an allegorical reading of these books is quite confusing and reductionist. In the process of writing his fantasy works, Lewis (an adult convert to Christianity) eventually came to incorporate some elements of Christian theological concepts into the stories in a way that was accessible to the average reader.

In this Lewis succeeds; The Chronicles of Narnia have become favourites with both children and adults. The books are not weighty, and can be read for their adventure, colour, and mythological ideas without concern for the Christian issues. Lewis maintained that the books were not allegorical, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". This is similar to what we would now call alternative history.

One of Lewis' early academic publications was The Allegory of Love (1936), about medieval allegories of courtly love. Consequently he kept a strict definition of allegory. As he states in one letter:

"If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, ‘What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?’ This is not allegory at all."
Lewis also dispelled the myth that he had originally fashioned the stories for the purpose of demonstrating Christian principles:

"Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument, then collected information about child psychology and decided what age group I'd write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out "allegories" to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn't write in that way. It all began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn't anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord."

Numbering the books, publication order and internal chronology
The books of the series, in the order of their publication, 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 Magician's Nephew (1955)
The Last Battle (1956)
The first American publisher, Macmillan, put numbers on the books and used the publication order. When HarperCollins took over the series, the books were renumbered using the internal chronological order, as suggested by Lewis' stepson, Douglas Gresham.

The Magician's Nephew (1955)
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)
The Horse and His Boy (1954)
Prince Caspian (1951)
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
The Silver Chair (1953)
The Last Battle (1956)
Gresham quoted Lewis' reply to a letter from an American fan in 1957, who was having an argument with his mother about the order:

"I think I agree with your order (i.e. chronological) for reading the books more than with your mother's. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn't think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last. But I found as I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them. I'm not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published."
Nevertheless, the reordering has brought ire from many fans of the series, who appreciate the original order which introduces important parts of the Narnia universe in the early part of the series and then provides explanation for them later in the prequels, in particular the creation story in The Magician's Nephew. Other arguments for the publication order include that Prince Caspian is subtitled "The Return to Narnia", and that the following fragments of text from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe support it as being the first book in the series:

None of the children knew who Aslan was, any more than you do.

That is the very end of the adventure of the wardrobe. But if the Professor was right, it was only the beginning of the adventures of Narnia.