XPost: alt.usage.english, rec.arts.books.childrens, alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: john-dean@fraglineone.net   
      
   Peter B. Juul wrote:   
   > "Alan Jones"  writes:   
   >   
   >> From the Harper Collins  website: "This [hardback]edition presents   
   >> all seven books unabridged in one impressive volume. The books are   
   >> presented here according to Lewis's preferred order, each chapter   
   >> graced with an illustration byt the original artist, Pauline   
   >> Baynes." Unfortunately it doesn't say what that "preferred order"   
   >> is, but I will see whether the local Ottakars has a copy.   
   >   
   > Said preferred order is based on a letter Lewis wrote to a boy   
   > once. And it is the chronological order.   
   >   
   > However, as I have just explained in another posting, it's a popular   
   > opinion that Lewis was simply wrong about this, him knowing his own   
   > works perhaps too well to see what would be the most giving order for   
   > a new reader.   
      
   Wikipedia quotes the letter:   
      
   "I think I agree with your order (i.e. chronological) 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 as 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 [1]." (Dorsett & Mead   
   1996)   
      
   [1] They weren't. "The Horse and His Boy" was written before "The Silver   
   Chair" but published after it.   
   --   
   John Dean   
   Oxford   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)