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Illustrations across different editions

Karisa
(@karisa)
NarniaWeb Regular

I’ve seen that not all editions of the books have all of the Pauline Baynes illustrations and I’m curious, which ones do have them all? I imagine the first editions would, but are there others? And is there a page online somewhere cataloguing everything where one could look at all of the illustrations in one place? It occurs to me since the different versions my sister and I have are more recent ones, I don’t know whether to say I’ve actually seen them all because I’m no longer certain that they contain everything.

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Topic starter Posted : April 23, 2025 8:25 pm
Narnian78
(@narnian78)
NarniaWeb Guru

@karisa 

The paperbacks from the 1970’s have the Pauline Baynes illustrations cropped, which is why I don’t particularly like that edition of the books. I think the Harper Collins hardcovers may have them all except for on the covers, which were done by another artist.  I am not sure about that since the editions appear to be modernized. The colorized drawings on the fiftieth anniversary of the books have Pauline Baynes’ drawings on the covers, but they are quite small and I am not sure if they are all of them like in the first edition.  I don’t think that there is an exact replica of the first edition of the books, which is long out of print.   I do like the colorized versions of Baynes’ artwork, which were done later. I kind of wish there was a large book of all her Narnia artwork. It deserves a book of its own since she was a very talented artist.

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Posted : April 24, 2025 2:44 am
Varnafinde and DavidD liked
Gandalf
(@momus)
NarniaWeb Newbie

@karisa 

I’ve been working on compiling a full list of all of Pauline Baynes artwork she did for Narnia. In addition to all of the original interior artwork, she did extra artwork for 3-4 different covers for each book and new artwork for A Book of Narnians and The Land of Narnia. I wish so much that they would create a book with ALL of the artwork, but I don’t think that would ever happen. In addition, we know that she had several pieces she did for Thé Hours and His Boy and The Silver Chair which were later rejected (these are referenced in CS Lewis letters). These may have been destroyed suivre they were not used, but they may be in a file somewhere. 

Now as to your original question… no versions of the books currently in print contain all of the original artwork from the 1st editions. Even the facsimiles are incomplete. 

Comparing the first editions with the full-colour editions, there are several illustrations missing in 3 of the books:

LWW: 1 missing (the full colour plate)

PC: 1 missing (the original full colour plate)

HHB: 5 missing (1 in-text and 4 charcoal plates)

The maps from PC, VDT, & SC are only available in colour in the Complete Narnia volume.

Finally, Baynes produced new full-colour plates for each of the 17 chapters for the Deluxe Edition of LWW in the 1990s. These are not available anywhere else. Unfortunately, she didn’t continue with the other 6 books. 

If anyone knows of any other Narnia artwork made by Baynes, please please reach out to me!

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Posted : July 10, 2025 5:41 pm
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