I have that Puffin edition too, and was really surprised to see it says "Reepicheep" where it should say "Peepiceek"! No other edition I've read has that error. It would surely have been baffling for first-time readers who had that incorrect version, since Peepiceek isn't mentioned anywhere else in Dawn Treader (he only plays a cameo role near the end of Prince Caspian), and so it isn't obvious from the context who Reepicheep is actually meant to be talking about.

I think the "Ettinsmuir" error in The Last Battle is there in all editions, as it was definitely in the 1980s Fontana Lions edition that I first read and I noticed it at once, having already read all the previous books and remembering the name of Ettinsmoor. Apparently "muir" is indeed the Scots version of "moor", and perhaps Lewis did forget that he'd used the standard English term when he'd named the moor in question. It seems an odd thing for him to forget, but it's hardly the only inconsistency between the books, and definitely not the biggest...

However, there's one variant that I only became aware of relatively recently, and it still has me puzzled. That Fontana Lions edition of The Last Battle most definitely has the name of the second-last chapter, and the repeated call of several of the characters, as "Further up and further in!" — which is exactly how I remember it from the first time I read it. That's how I've always seen it quoted elsewhere, too, in every Narnia commentary I've ever read, and indeed in the usual closing line of NarniaWeb's own Talking Beasts podcast. And yet... the HarperCollins edition with the coloured illustrations (I think it's late 1990s; I don't currently have a copy) has it as "Farther up and farther in" throughout. I thought that was a mistake, or a modernisation, or something, until I bought the 1970s Puffin editions. It's "farther" in that one too.   (Both of those versions, I should add, were British editions of the book, so it's not one of the occasional changes that were made for the early American editions.)

That has got me baffled, as it's such an iconic line, and as I said, it seems to be established in the fandom canon as "further". I definitely prefer "further", as it has a wider range of meaning — at least, the way I was taught at school, "farther" only refers to physical distance, while "further" gives the sense of continuing in figurative as well as literal ways, and the characters in the story are definitely embarking on something higher and deeper than just a physical journey as they discover Aslan's country. And yet, and yet... that Puffin edition was, I'm pretty sure, only the second edition of the book ever to be published (certainly the first paperback version). It's the earliest copy I've seen so far, and it has "farther"...

So my question is — and I'm wondering if anyone here can help — which wording is used in the FIRST edition of The Last Battle? What was it that Lewis himself actually wrote? Did he write "further", and that's why most Narnia fans know it as that — and presumably some busybody editor at Penguin Books decided it should be "farther" and changed it for the Puffin paperback? Or did Lewis in fact write "Farther up and farther in", and it got changed some time after the 1970s, and we've all been quoting that famous line incorrectly all these years???

I'd love it if someone could clear this mystery up!  

I didn’t notice any typo errors in the Harper Collins edition of the Narnia books that I own. Maybe the way the set of seven books is numbered would be considered a mistake by those who prefer the published order. Number one of the set is The Magician’s Nephew when it should probably be The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  I don’t know if any of the sets available today have the books in published order.  The old Macmillan paperbacks of the 1970’s had the stories in right order, but Pauline Baynes’ illustrations were cropped and the paper was cheaper quality than in the hardcover editions.  So I guess having the numbering incorrect is worth putting up with if you are getting a more durable hardcover book.  However, I still think The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe should be number one. 🙂

@narnian78 So do many of us!

I know of people who stick or write new numbers on the spines of their numbered books - you may like to do the same!

@coracle 

I won’t alter the books even though I think they should have been numbered differently.  But I have known other people who have changed the numbers on the spines.  The books are quite good in quality otherwise. Another good edition is the paperback set with the color illustrations by Pauline Baynes, but I am not sure if the hardcover version of that set is still in print.  I remember that Barnes & Noble had a book of all seven stories in one volume, but that book is now out of print and very expensive.  As I remember, the order of the stories was chronological. It was quite a nice book and beautifully bound like many of their classics.  I always wondered why they didn’t keep it in print so at least it could be affordable.

How odd, Courtenay! I don't have a first edition, though I did confirm that the US 1973 and 2000 full-colour editions have "further" too.

I ran across a difference between the 1973 and 2000 versions of TLB today, from Tirian's introduction to Digory and Edmund by Peter. In the 2000 edition, Lewis has a line about Tirian meeting a man with a golden beard and a wise face, and then Peter says this is the Lord Digory, who was with Lady Polly at the creation of Narnia. He then goes on to introduce Edmund and Lucy.

In the 1973 edition, though, Lewis has the same line about the man with the golden beard and the wise face but skips the line about Lord Digory, instead going directly to introducing Edmund and Lucy (implying then that Edmund has the golden beard and wise face). I'm assuming the 2000 edition has the text with Lewis's revisions, but haven't tried to look into it more yet.

I read the series in German first, and I recently found an interesting (for lack of a better word) variant in my edition of The Last Battle, as translate by Hans Eich. Mr and Mrs Pevensie are not existent! Only through the Companion To Narnia did I find out they were ever mentioned at all (small reminder: they die in the train accident and are later in Aslan's country/true England)! Now there's a new translation on the market where they are included, but in the version I read the passage mentioning them were simply left out. I just wanted to point it out because I thought it was a curious thing...

@e_the_wise Now that's really strange! I've seen other examples before of significant changes being made when a book is translated into another language — whether because of cultural factors, or maybe the translators just thought they could tell a better story than the original author did, I don't know — but I hadn't heard of this happening with the Narnia books.

I wonder if Hans Eich (or his publishers) decided to leave out the Pevensies' parents at the end of The Last Battle because they thought it was too sad to have the parents die, as well as three of their four children? Maybe they thought it was unfair for Susan to be orphaned as well as losing all her siblings? I've always assumed that the reason Lewis included Mr and Mrs Pevensie in that railway accident was because he didn't want his readers to be upset at the thought of them grieving for Peter and Edmund and Lucy — and also, it gives Lewis the chance to show us that the "real England" is included in Aslan's country as well, and implicitly so are the real originals of all other countries and worlds, and they're all joined together and can easily be reached and explored.

I'd be very interested to know of any other major changes made in translations of the Chronicles, if you've found any others in the German editions, or if any other multi-lingual NarniaWebbers have some examples!

Posted by: @courtenay

However, there's one variant that I only became aware of relatively recently, and it still has me puzzled. That Fontana Lions edition of The Last Battle most definitely has the name of the second-last chapter, and the repeated call of several of the characters, as "Further up and further in!" — which is exactly how I remember it from the first time I read it. That's how I've always seen it quoted elsewhere, too, in every Narnia commentary I've ever read, and indeed in the usual closing line of NarniaWeb's own Talking Beasts podcast. And yet... the HarperCollins edition with the coloured illustrations (I think it's late 1990s; I don't currently have a copy) has it as "Farther up and farther in" throughout. I thought that was a mistake, or a modernisation, or something, until I bought the 1970s Puffin editions. It's "farther" in that one too.   (Both of those versions, I should add, were British editions of the book, so it's not one of the occasional changes that were made for the early American editions.)

That has got me baffled, as it's such an iconic line, and as I said, it seems to be established in the fandom canon as "further". I definitely prefer "further", as it has a wider range of meaning — at least, the way I was taught at school, "farther" only refers to physical distance, while "further" gives the sense of continuing in figurative as well as literal ways, and the characters in the story are definitely embarking on something higher and deeper than just a physical journey as they discover Aslan's country. And yet, and yet... that Puffin edition was, I'm pretty sure, only the second edition of the book ever to be published (certainly the first paperback version). It's the earliest copy I've seen so far, and it has "farther"...

So my question is — and I'm wondering if anyone here can help — which wording is used in the FIRST edition of The Last Battle? What was it that Lewis himself actually wrote? Did he write "further", and that's why most Narnia fans know it as that — and presumably some busybody editor at Penguin Books decided it should be "farther" and changed it for the Puffin paperback? Or did Lewis in fact write "Farther up and farther in", and it got changed some time after the 1970s, and we've all been quoting that famous line incorrectly all these years???

All right, I've finally found the answer to my question here from over a year ago!

Last week, I was in an excellent second hand bookshop in Ironbridge (delightful village in Shropshire that is arguably the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, if anyone's interested in history!), and among the children's books, they had most of the Chronicles of Narnia in the original hardcover editions. I was seriously tempted — especially as nearly all of them had dust jackets in good condition! — but I was already spending enough money on souvenirs and couldn't justify blowing even more on books that I already have...

But The Last Battle was there, and so I just had to take a look at that second-last chapter. And yes, we HAVE all been quoting it wrong all these years, myself included, let alone the Talking Beasts presenters at the end of every episode. What Lewis actually wrote (every time it occurs in those final pages) was: "Farther up and farther in!"

I've no idea when it was changed to "further", as it definitely is in many later editions. I'd assume it was a change made for the early American editions, like so many textual differences between the Chronicles. But the copies I grew up reading — the 1980s Fontana Lions editions (here's the cover from LB) — were definitely British editions, and had the British text throughout. And they most definitely had it as "further up and further in." So I've no idea when it was changed, but it definitely was at some stage. And then for later British editions (I mentioned the 1990s HarperCollins ones above), it went back to "farther". Curiouser and curiouser!!

Does anyone out there have a first American edition of The Last Battle, which would clear up whether or not that's when the change was made? If the first American edition says "further", then the change was presumably made by Lewis or by his American publishers; if it's still "farther" there, then the change must have been made after Lewis's death, for unknown reasons. (The first British paperback editions — Puffin, published in the 1960s and '70s — have "farther", as I've mentioned.)

Anyway, here's what it boils down to... much as "further" sounds more correct to me from sheer familiarity, I can only accept that the wording C.S. Lewis himself wrote was definitely Farther up and farther in. So that's the end of me misquoting him, especially as the newer editions have reverted to "farther" as well!

(And if you lovely presenters on Talking Beasts would like to change your signing-off quote, at least, unlike me as an Aussie, you won't pronounce "farther" to sound the same as "father", but that's another matter...  )