Books

[Children's fantasy series] COMPLETE LEATHER-BOUND FIRST EDITIONS, first impressions. Seven volumes. Octavo (21 x 15 x 19cm). With illustrations by Pauline Baynes. Finely bound in recent navy full morocco, with gilt titles to spines, raised bands, marbled endpapers, and all edges gilt. The maps from Prince Caspian, The Horse and His Boy, The Silver Chair, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader are bound into the preliminaries of those books. Housed in a matching cloth slipcase with ribbon-pull. A touch of light occasional spotting. Faint remains of a washed ink ownership to half-title of 'The Silver Chair'. A small hole to map in 'Prince Caspian.' Otherwise crisp, clean copies in an attractive new leather binding.

The Last Battle is the seventh and final novel in the Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. The plot involves the characters endeavoring to defend Narnia from an invasion led by a deceptive ape named Shift and his unwitting pawn Puzzle, a donkey. The book weaves a narrative of the apocalyptic end of the fictional world of Narnia and serves as an allegory of the Christian belief of the Last Judgment.

Identifying first editions of 'The Last Battle' usually involves looking for the publisher's name 'The Bodley Head' on the title page, as well as the date 1956 with no subsequent printings or editions mentioned.