"I think I agree with your [chronological] order for reading the books more than with your mother's. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn't think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last, but I found I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them. I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published."
—C. S. Lewis's reply to a letter from Laurence Krieg, an American fan who was having an argument with his mother about the reading order.[16]
The Magician's Nephew was originally published as the sixth book in the Narnia Chronicles. Most reprintings of the novels until the 1980s also reflected the order of original publication. In 1980 HarperCollins published the series ordered by the chronology of the events in the novels. This meant The Magician's Nephew was numbered as the first in the series. HarperCollins, which had previously published editions of the novels outside the United States, also acquired the rights to publish the novels in that country in 1994 and used this sequence in the uniform worldwide edition published in that year.[17]
Laurence Krieg, a young fan, wrote to Lewis, asking him to adjudicate between his views of the correct sequence of reading the novels – according to the sequence of events, with The Magician's Nephew being placed first – and that of his mother, who thought the order of publication was more appropriate. Lewis wrote back, appearing to support the younger Krieg's views, although he did point out that perhaps it would not matter what order they were read in.[18]
Some literary scholars have argued that the publication order is more effective in drawing the readers into the world of Narnia. In the book Lewis wrote first, Lucy Pevensie's discovery of the wardrobe that opens onto a forest and a mysterious lamp-post creates a sense of suspense about an unknown land she is discovering for the first time. This would be anticlimactic if the reader has already been introduced to Narnia in The Magician's Nephew and already knows the origins of Narnia, the wardrobe, and the lamp-post. Lewis scholar Peter Schakel points out that the narrative of The Magician's Nephew assumes that the reader has already read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and is now being shown its beginnings.[19]
Paul Ford cites several scholars who have weighed in against the decision of HarperCollins to present the books in the order of their internal chronology,[20] and continues, "most scholars disagree with this decision and find it the least faithful to Lewis's deepest intentions". These scholars argue that the narrative of The Magician's Nephew appears to assume that the reader has already read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and is now being shown its beginnings.[21]
