90 Sec #3 – When The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was Published (YouTube)

Here’s the third regular show from my new 90 second YouTube channel. The purpose is to help people briefly learn about significant events in the life of C.S. Lewis.

Note the text version of the show is below, WITH footnotes!

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Published (October 16, 1950)

If you asked someone to name a book by C.S. Lewis the majority would give this title. However, during his lifetime this would not have been the case. When Jack died less than fifteen years after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (LWW) was published, he was more known (at least in the U.S.) for *The Screwtape Letters, as evidenced by the obituary published in the New York Times.[1]

According to Jack, he began his first tale about Narnia when he “was about forty,”[2] but the initial idea came to him when he was a teenager.[3] Jack didn’t get very far with the story and didn’t pick it up again until almost ten years after that initial effort. It was in the spring of 1948 that the landmark tale began to take shape and was then finished less than a year later.[4] Today, it is not only the most recognized title from Lewis, but according to one report, it is the tenth bestselling novel of all time.[5] Interestingly, Tolkien wasn’t a fan of LWW; in a letter written after Lewis died he commented that Narnia was “outside the range of my sympathy.”[6]

[1] Accessed 3/18/2019 – http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/lewis-obit.pdf

[2] “It All Began with a Picture…” in On Stories; pg. 53 (1982).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Companion to Narnia; pg. 464 (2005).

[5] Accessed 3/18/2019 – https://bestlifeonline.com/best-selling-novels/

[6] November 11, 1964 letter to David Kolb, S.J. in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien; pg. 352 (2000).

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Books mentioned in this episode: