Other Books by This Author

  FICTION

  The Pilgrim’s Regress

  Out of the Silent Planet

  The Screwtape Letters

  Perelandra (aka Voyage to Venus)

  That Hideous Strength

  The Great Divorce

  Till We Have Faces

  The Dark Tower

  NON-FICTION

  The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition

  Rehabilitations and other essays

  The Personal Heresy: A Controversy [with E. M. W. Tillyard]

  The Problem of Pain

  The Case for Christianity

  A Preface to Paradise Lost

  Broadcast Talks

  The Abolition of Man

  Christian Behaviour

  Beyond Personality

  Miracles: A Preliminary Study

  Arthurian Torso

  Mere Christianity

  Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life

  Reflections on the Psalms

  The Four Loves

  Studies in Words

  The World’s Last Night and Other Essays

  An Experiment in Criticism

  A Grief Observed

  They Asked for a Paper: Papers and Addresses

  Selections from Layamon’s Brut [ed. G L Brook]

  Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

  Beyond the Bright Blur

  The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature

  Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature

  Spenser’s Images of Life

  Letters to an American Lady

  Christian Reflections

  Selected Literary Essays

  God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

  Undeceptions

  The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses

  Of Other Worlds

  Present Concerns

  All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis 1922–27

  The Latin Letters of C.S. Lewis

  Collected Letters, Vol. I: Family Letters 1905–1931

  Collected Letters, Vol. II: Books, Broadcasts and War 1931–1949

  Collected Letters, Vol. III: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963

  POETRY

  Spirits in Bondage

  Dymer

  Narrative Poems [ed. Walter Hooper]

  The Collected Poems of C. S. Lewis [ed. Walter Hooper]

  The Chronicles of Narnia: The Complete Collection

  C. S. LEWIS

  All rights reserved.

  This title is in the public domain in Canada and is not subject to any license or copyright.

  Cover Design: Kelly Hill

  Cover Image: (lion) © Pavel_Smol / Shutterstock

  ISBN: 978-1-55199-729-2

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Magician’s Nephew Dedication

  I. The Wrong Door

  II. Digory and His Uncle

  III. The Wood Between the Worlds

  IV. The Bell and the Hammer

  V. The Deplorable Word

  VI. The Beginning of Uncle Andrew’s Troubles

  VII. What Happened at the Front Door

  VIII. The Fight at the Lamp-Post

  IX. The Founding of Narnia

  X. The First Joke and Other Matters

  XI. Digory and His Uncle Are Both in Trouble

  XII. Strawberry’s Adventure

  XIII. An Unexpected Meeting

  XIV. The Planting of the Tree

  XV. The End of This Story and the Beginning of All the Others

  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Dedication

  I. Lucy Looks into a Wardrobe

  II. What Lucy Found There

  III. Edmund and the Wardrobe

  IV. Turkish Delight

  V. Back on This Side of the Door

  VI. Into the Forest

  VII. A Day with the Beavers

  VIII. What Happened after Dinner

  IX. In the Witch’s House

  X. The Spell Begins to Break

  XI. Aslan Is Nearer

  XII. Peter’s First Battle

  XIII. Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time

  XIV. The Triumph of the Witch

  XV. Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time

  XVI. What Happened About the Statues

  XVII. The Hunting of the White Stag

  The Horse and his Boy Dedication

  I. How Shasta Set Out on His Travels

  II. A Wayside Adventure

  III. At the Gates of Tashbaan

  IV. Shasta Falls in with the Narnians

  V. Prince Corin

  VI. Shasta Among the Tombs

  VII. Aravis in Tashbaan

  VIII. In the House of the Tisroc

  IX. Across the Desert

  X. The Hermit of the Southern March

  XI. The Unwelcome Fellow Traveller

  XII. Shasta in Narnia

  XIII. The Fight at Anvard

  XIV. How Bree Became a Wiser Horse

  XV. Rabadash the Ridiculous

  Prince Caspian Dedication

  I. The Island

  II. The Ancient Treasure House

  III. The Dwarf

  IV. The Dwarf Tells of Prince Caspian

  V. Caspian’s Adventure in the Mountains

  VI. The People that Lived in Hiding

  VII. Old Narnia in Danger

  VIII. How They Left the Island

  IX. What Lucy Saw

  X. The Return of the Lion

  XI. The Lion Roars

  XII. Sorcery and Sudden Vengeance

  XIII. The High King in Command

  XIV. How All Were Very Busy

  XV. Aslan Makes a Door in the Air

  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Dedication

  I. The Picture in the Bedroom

  II. On Board the Dawn Treader

  III. The Lone Islands

  IV. What Caspian Did There

  V. The Storm and What Came of It

  VI. The Adventures of Eustace

  VII. How the Adventure Ended

  VIII. Two Narrow Escapes

  IX. The Island of the Voices

  X. The Magician’s Book

  XI. The Dufflepuds Made Happy

  XII. The Dark Island

  XIII. The Three Sleepers

  XIV. The Beginning of the End of the World

  XV. The Wonders of the Last Sea

  XVI. The Very End of the World

  The Silver Chair Dedication

  I. Behind the Gym

  II. Jill Is Given a Task

  III. The Sailing of the King

  IV. A Parliament of Owls

  V. Puddlegum

  VI. The Wild Waste Lands of the North

  VII. The Hill of the Strange Trenches

  VIII. The House of Harfang

  IX. How They Discovered Something Worth Knowing

  X. Travels Without the Sun

  XI. In the Dark Castle

  XII. The Queen of Underland

  XIII. Underland Without The Queen

  XIV. The Bottom of the Wolrd

  XV. The Disappearance of Jill

  XVI. The Healing of Harms

  The Last Battle I. By Caldron Pool

  II. The Rashness of the King

  III. The Ape in Its Glory

  IV. What Happened That Night

  V. How Help Came to the King

  VI. A Good Night’s Work

  VII. Mainly About Dwarfs

  VIII. What News the Eagle Brought

  IX. The Great Meeting

  X. Who Will Go into the Stable?

  XI. The Pace Quickens

  XII. Through the Stable Door

  XIII. How the Dwarfs Refused to Be Taken In

  XIV. Night Falls on Narnia

  XV. Further Up and Further In

  XVI. Farewell to Shadowlands

  THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW

  To The Kilmer Family

  Chapter I

  THE WRONG DOOR

  THIS IS A story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began.

  In those days Mr. Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road. In those days, if you were a boy you had to wear a stiff Eton collar every day, and schools were usually nastier than now. But meals were nicer; and as for sweets, I won’t tell you how cheap and good they were, because it would only make your mouth water in vain. And in those days there lived in London a girl called Polly Plummer.

  She lived in one of a long row of houses which were all joined together. One morning she was out in the back garden when a boy scrambled up from the garden next door and put his face over the wall. Polly was very surprised because up till now there had never been any children in that house, but only Mr. Ketterley and Miss Ketterley, a brother and sister, old bachelor and old maid, living together. So she looked up, full of curiosity. The face of the strange boy was very grubby. It could hardly have been grubbier if he had first rubbed his hands in the earth, and then had a good cry, and then dried his face with his hands. As a matter of fact, this was very nearly what he had been doing.

  “Hullo,” said Polly.

&nb
sp; “Hullo,” said the boy. “What’s your name?”

  “Polly,” said Polly. “What’s yours?”

  “Digory,” said the boy.

  “I say, what a funny name!” said Polly.

  “It isn’t half so funny as Polly,” said Digory.

  “Yes it is,” said Polly.

  “No, it isn’t,” said Digory.

  “At any rate I do wash my face,” said Polly. “Which is what you need to do; especially after—” and then she stopped. She had been going to say “After you’ve been blubbing,” but she thought that wouldn’t be polite.

  “All right, I have then,” said Digory in a much louder voice, like a boy who was so miserable that he didn’t care who knew he had been crying. “And so would you,” he went on, “if you’d lived all your life in the country and had a pony, and a river at the bottom of the garden, and then been brought to live in a beastly Hole like this.”

  “London isn’t a Hole,” said Polly indignantly. But the boy was too wound up to take any notice of her, and he went on—

  “And if your father was away in India—and you had to come and live with an Aunt and an Uncle who’s mad (how would you like that?)—and if the reason was that they were looking after your Mother—and if your Mother was ill and was going to—going to—die.” Then his face went the wrong sort of shape as it does if you’re trying to keep back your tears.

  “I didn’t know. I’m sorry,” said Polly humbly. And then, because she hardly knew what to say, and also to turn Digory’s mind to cheerful subjects, she asked:

  “Is Mr. Ketterley really mad?”

  “Well either he’s mad,” said Digory, “or there’s some other mystery. He has a study on the top-floor and Aunt Letty says I must never go up there. Well, that looks fishy to begin with. And then there’s another thing. Whenever he tries to say anything to me at meal times—he never even tries to talk to her—she always shuts him up. She says, ‘Don’t worry the boy, Andrew’ or ‘I’m sure Digory doesn’t want to hear about that’ or else ‘Now, Digory, wouldn’t you like to go out and play in the garden’.”

  “What sort of things does he try to say?”

  “I don’t know. He never gets far enough. But there’s more than that. One night—it was last night in fact—as I was going past the foot of the attic-stairs on my way to bed (and I don’t much care for going past them either) I’m sure I heard a yell.”

  “Perhaps he keeps a mad wife shut up there.”

  “Yes, I’ve thought of that.”

  “Or perhaps he’s a coiner.”

  “Or he might have been a pirate, like the man at the beginning of Treasure Island, and be always hiding from his old shipmates.”

  “How exciting!” said Polly, “I never knew your house was so interesting.”

  “You may think it interesting,” said Digory. “But you wouldn’t like it if you had to sleep there. How would you like to lie awake listening for Uncle Andrew’s step to come creeping along the passage to your room? And he has such awful eyes.”

  That was how Polly and Digory got to know one another; and as it was just the beginning of the summer holidays and neither of them was going away to the sea that year, they met nearly every day.

  Their adventures began chiefly because it was one of the wettest and coldest summers there had been for years. That drove them to do indoor things: you might say, indoor exploration. It is wonderful how much exploring you can do with a stump of candle in a big house, or in a row of houses. Polly had discovered long ago that if you opened a certain little door in the box-room attic of her house you would find the cistern and a dark place behind it which you could get into by a little careful climbing. The dark place was like a long tunnel with brick wall on one side and sloping roof on the other. In the roof there were little chinks of light between the slates. There was no floor in this tunnel: you had to step from rafter to rafter, and between them there was only plaster. If you stepped on this you would find yourself falling through the ceiling of the room below. Polly had used the bit of the tunnel just beside the cistern as a smugglers’ cave. She had brought up bits of old packing cases and the seats of broken kitchen chairs, and things of that sort, and spread them across from rafter to rafter so as to make a bit of floor. Here she kept a cash-box containing various treasures, and a story she was writing, and usually a few apples. She had often drunk a quiet bottle of ginger-beer in there: the old bottles made it look more like a smugglers’ cave.

  Digory quite liked the Cave (she wouldn’t let him see the story) but he was more interested in exploring.

  “Look here,” he said. “How long does this tunnel go on for? I mean, does it stop where your house ends?”

  “No,” said Polly. “The walls don’t go out to the roof. It goes on. I don’t know how far.”

  “Then we could get the length of the whole row of houses.”

  “So we could,” said Polly. “And oh, I say!”

  “What?”

  “We could get into the other houses.”

  “Yes, and get taken up for burglars! No thanks.”

  “Don’t be so jolly clever. I was thinking of the house beyond yours.”

  “What about it?”

  “Why, it’s the empty one. Daddy says it’s always been empty ever since we came here.”

  “I suppose we ought to have a look at it then,” said Digory. He was a good deal more excited than you’d have thought from the way he spoke. For of course he was thinking, just as you would have been, of all the reasons why the house might have been empty so long. So was Polly. Neither of them said the word “haunted.” And both felt that once the thing had been suggested, it would be feeble not to do it.

  “Shall we go and try it now?” said Digory.

  “All right,” said Polly.

  “Don’t if you’d rather not,” said Digory.

  “I’m game if you are,” said she.

  “How are we to know when we’re in the next house but one?”

  They decided they would have to go out into the box-room and walk across it taking steps as long as the steps from one rafter to the next. That would give them an idea of how many rafters went to a room. Then they would allow about four more for the passage between the two attics in Polly’s house, and then the same number for the maid’s bedroom as for the box-room. That would give them the length of the house. When they had done that distance twice they would be at the end of Digory’s house; any door they came to after that would let them into an attic of the empty house.

  “But I don’t expect it’s really empty at all,” said Digory.

  “What do you expect?”

  “I expect someone lives there in secret, only coming in and out at night, with a dark lantern. We shall probably discover a gang of desperate criminals and get a reward. It’s all rot to say a house would be empty all those years unless there was some mystery.”

  “Daddy thought it must be the drains,” said Polly.

  “Pooh! Grown-ups are always thinking of uninteresting explanations,” said Digory. Now that they were talking by daylight in the attic instead of by candlelight in the Smugglers’ Cave it seemed much less likely that the empty house would be haunted.

  When they had measured the attic they had to get a pencil and do a sum. They both got different answers to it at first, and even when they agreed I am not sure they got it right. They were in a hurry to start on the exploration.

  “We mustn’t make a sound,” said Polly as they climbed in again behind the cistern. Because it was such an important occasion they took a candle each (Polly had a good store of these in her cave).

  It was very dark and dusty and draughty and they stepped from rafter to rafter without a word except when they whispered to one another, “We’re opposite your attic now” or “this must be halfway through our house.” And neither of them stumbled and the candles didn’t go out, and at last they came where they could see a little door in the brick wall on their right. There was no bolt or handle on this side of it, of course, for the door had been made for getting in, not for getting out; but there was a catch (as there often is on the inside of a cupboard door) which they felt sure the would be able to turn.

  “Shall I?” said Digory.

  “I’m game if you are,” said Polly, just as she had said before. Both felt that it was becoming very serious, but neither would draw back. Digory pushed round the catch with some difficulty. The door swung open and the sudden daylight made them blink. Then, with a great shock, they saw that they were looking, not into a deserted attic, but into a furnished room. But it seemed empty enough. It was dead silent. Polly’s curiosity got the better of her. She blew out her candle and stepped out into the strange room, making no more noise than a mouse.