C.S. Lewis Books in Order

The Narnia order question, settled (mostly)

There are two ways to read The Chronicles of Narnia, and people have strong feelings about both. Publication order is the order Lewis wrote them: 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). Chronological order — the one printed on most box sets since the 1990s — moves The Magician's Nephew to the front, because it tells the creation of Narnia, and slots The Horse and His Boy third.

Our advice, and the advice of most longtime readers: go with publication order the first time. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was written as an introduction and works as one; The Magician's Nephew is a prequel whose delights depend on already knowing the wardrobe, the lamppost and the Professor. Save it for sixth, where the reveals land. (The chronological camp likes to cite a 1957 letter in which Lewis told a young fan he agreed with the boy's mother-annoying chronological preference. He also said it probably didn't matter much. We're with him on that.)

Beyond Narnia: the Space Trilogy and the fiction for adults

The Cosmic Trilogy — Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943) and That Hideous Strength (1945) — sends a Cambridge philologist named Ransom to Mars and then Venus before a dark, sprawling finale set in an English university town. It's strange, lyrical science fiction with a theological spine, and Perelandra in particular has passionate admirers. Till We Have Faces (1956), a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche narrated by Psyche's jealous sister, was the novel Lewis himself thought his best; it's his most grown-up and most demanding. And The Screwtape Letters (1942) — advice from a senior devil to his nephew on how to damn an ordinary Englishman — is the wittiest thing he wrote, and a fine place for an adult to begin.

The nonfiction, and one small book about grief

Mere Christianity (1952), assembled from the wartime radio talks, is the plain-spoken case for faith that has made Lewis the most-read Christian writer of the last century. The Problem of Pain, Miracles, The Four Loves and The Abolition of Man are the other pillars. Surprised by Joy (1955) is his memoir of a childhood in Belfast and a long, reluctant journey to belief. And A Grief Observed (1961), written in notebooks after the death of his wife Joy Davidman and first published under a pseudonym, is the rawest and shortest of them all — sixty pages that a great many bereaved people say are the only ones that told them the truth. (Their late marriage is the subject of the film Shadowlands.) A note on the list above: the catalog files several of these under 'Standalone Novels'; they are nonfiction.