I recently bought A Field Guide to Narnia (published in 2004) by Colin Duriez. According to the cover it has “an overview of the life and work of C. S. Lewis, A to Z coverage of Narnian beings, places, things, and events”, and “an introduction to key spiritual themes”. I thought it was well worth buying.
There is also Companion to Narnia: A Complete Guide to the Magical World of C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia (2005 edition) by Paul F. Ford. This is an excellent comprehensive reference book.
Martha C. Sammons’ A Guide through Narnia (I have the 1979 edition) is a very good book for people who are new to Narnia and especially for those who are reading the books for first time.
I would recommend all three of these books for reference and information about Narnia. If you have any others that you feel are helpful please list them here. 🙂
Topic starter
Posted : November 4, 2023 8:51 am
Wood Between The Worlds liked
Hi there.
I'm looking for a reference which meticulously documents all textual changes throughout every edition of each of the Chronicles of Narnia books.
I know that Companion to Narnia has a section where some changes are discussed. It seems that this messageboard has thoroughly discussed the variant passage in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and that is mentioned on Wikipedia as well.
I don't want to derail your thread with the particular details of variant readings across editions (I'll start my own discussion thread for that) but would value whatever others can tell me about references (books or otherwise) that document all changes to the text across every known edition of the books.
This post was modified 5 months ago 2 times by Wood Between The Worlds
Posted : December 14, 2023 1:06 am
It seems like such a book which would show the differences in the Narnia editions would be difficult to find. I’m not even sure if a book like that exists. I wish you good luck and hope you find something like that. I used to have an old paperback set of the Narnia books from the 1970’s, but I gave it away because I didn’t think it was very good quality (it was printed on poor quality paper and the illustrations by Pauline Baynes were cropped). I didn’t particularly like it, but the text may have been a little different from the newer hardcover books which I own. I usually don’t like to keep things of poor quality and will often replace them with something better. I have never regretted buying the newer hardcover set since being of better quality it looked so much nicer to me. 🙂
Topic starter
Posted : December 14, 2023 4:53 am
Wood Between The Worlds liked