Books

London: Geoffrey Bles, 1951. First edition of the second book in Lewis' beloved Narnia series. Octavo, original cloth, cartographic endpapers, illustrated by Pauline Baynes. With an autograph note signed by C.S. Lewis to his PhD student at Cambridge, Anthony Spearing. On Lewis' Magdalene College, Cambridge letterhead, the note reads in full, "5th Nov. 57 Dear Mr. Spearing, I gather I have been inflicted as you as a "superior" so I suppose we out to meet. Wd. next Friday at 12 suit you? Don't bother replying if it would. Yours sincerely C. S. Lewis." The recipient of the letter, Anthony Spearing was assigned to report to Lewis as his PhD supervisor when he arrived as a student at Cambridge the same year Lewis arrived from Oxford as the first occupant of the new chair of Medieval and Renaissance English. He noted that "Lewis was extremely conscientious in commenting in detail on anything I submitted to him, and he most kindly went on doing that after I had ceased to be his…

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a fantasy novel for children by C. S. Lewis, published by Geoffrey Bles in 1950. It is the first published and best known of seven novels in The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956). Among all the author's books, it is also the most widely held in libraries. Although it was written as well as published first in the series, it is volume two in recent editions, which are sequenced by the stories' chronology (the events of The Magician's Nephew take precedence).