Like I said I have begun reading the Chronicles for the first time a few months ago. I found LWW at my local bookstore. I have the big tome and the boxed set. I read them in an unique order of my own which combines publication and chronological. Here is my order:

1. LWW
2. HHB
3. PC
4. VDT
5. SC
6. MN
7. LB

I watched the Walden Adaptations on Disney+, have the BBC version on DVD, and own the radio dramas (BBC 4 on CD and Focus on the Family digitally).

I was 7 years old when the children's pastor of our church turned on the BBC adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe during a Saturday evening service, my 4 year old sister was terrified of Maugrim at first but we both became huge fans of Narnia that night. Our dad read the book to my younger sister shortly after but I have never enjoyed being read to so I doubt I listened, since my reading level at the time was definitely not up to reading the book I think I probably read it myself about a year later.

When I was about 9 my grandmother gave my sister a copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and she gave me a copy of The Horse and His Boy, she knew we were both obsessed with the BBC Chronicles of Narnia and at the time I was also extremely horse crazy so that gift was a huge hit.

I don't think I read the rest of the books until I was almost 11, a friend of our oldest sister was going away to college and she gave us her childhood books, amongst them were the Chronicles of Narnia. I don't remember what order I read them in, that set wasn't numbered, but my guess is I read Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Silver Chair before The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle since I was familiar with the BBC adaptations. 

My absolute first introduction to Narnia was the 1979 animated film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which must have been shown on TV (in Australia, where I grew up) some time in the mid-1980s, when I was about four years old. I very vaguely remember it as bright and colourful, but I never had a great attention span for TV and film (I've always much preferred books) and I really didn't take in very much of the story.

Not very long afterwards, probably within the same year, was my first encounter with the actual book. (I can pinpoint this almost exactly to mid-to-late 1986, because I remember clearly it was before we moved house at the end of that year.) We were staying at my maternal grandmother's house in Melbourne, probably during the winter (June) or spring (September) school holidays, and my mum got hold of a second-hand paperback copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, with that gorgeous Pauline Baynes cover with the two girls dancing with Aslan. I recognised the title at once from the film and was very eager to read it with Mum, so that's what we did, snuggled up in bed, over the next few nights. (I was already learning to read, but Mum did most of the reading for longer books like this.)

I was just entranced, right from the start, with this story of a little girl (the youngest in her family, just like me) who looked into a wardrobe, just out of curiosity, and found a magical land in there. As I said, I didn't remember very much at all of the movie version, so nearly everything in the story was surprising and exciting to me. I was more drawn in by it than by any other story I'd ever heard before it, honestly. Even though I'd never seen snow in my life, and to us Christmas was in the summer (I did know it was in winter on the other side of the world), I still got the point that the White Witch making it "always winter and never Christmas" meant an inescapable cold despair with no joy and hope at all. And when Aslan gave himself up to her — she couldn't really be going to kill him, surely?! Oh no, no... I've always been glad we kept on reading past the end of that chapter to the absolutely glorious moment where he comes back to life, or I probably wouldn't have been able to get to sleep that night!!

I didn't realise there were other books in the series until three years later in 1989, when I was seven and now at school, and we had "book club" — an organisation that offered books to primary school students at discounted prices, and that year they were selling all the Chronicles of Narnia, so my older sister bought the other six books (well, our parents must have done the buying!). As soon as she'd finished reading them, it was my turn to devour them, again in bed with Mum night by night — we always read together before bedtime, by now taking turns with the chapters, although Mum did tend to fall asleep while I was reading and I would have to nudge her awake! As we'd already read LWW, we skipped that one and read the rest in chronological order, starting with MN and going straight on to HHB, PC and so on. I'm glad I had the benefit of reading LWW first, though — it really is the best introduction to Narnia.

And then not long after we'd finished reading the whole wonderful series — which in my memory seemed to stretch on for months and months, but it must have been only a few weeks, considering we usually managed three or four chapters a night — the BBC adaptations of the Chronicles started being shown on TV. I absolutely loved them, despite the laughably cheap and hokey costumes and effects (they really were hilariously bad even for that era!) — after all, they were the best screen versions we had at the time, and they were very solidly faithful to the books, which is more than can be said for more recent adaptations.

And that's how Narnia became part of my life and has been so ever since!

I think I mentioned this in my introduction, but here's the long version:

When I was a kid, the school gave out reading assignments (picture books, which I found far too easy, I was always a strong reader), so I went and picked out the biggest and thickest of them, which turned out to be a picture book adaption of LWW. Not being satisfied with the abridged version, I went and pestered my mother for the whole set, and she got me a really good full color paperback edition, which I reread over and over again. Back then my two favorite series were Narnia and Harry Potter. I eventually outgrew Harry Potter, but I always keep a copy of one Narnia book or another on my desk. I think that I have tried my best to live like a Narnian and failed, which is rather disheartening. When I read the books now I'm always filled with a faint sad feeling, one that anchors me when life gets tough. Surprisingly enough, I'm progressivist, but I've always had a soft spot for Narnia.

I was first introduced to Narnia through the BBC TV series LWW when I was 5 years old.  My dad (who was a teacher at a Christian school at the time) wanted to the first episode to be recorded on VHS apparently word had been going on around the school (and maybe church as well?) about the new tv series.  That was all I knew to begin with, and 5 year old me was the one who he asked to record it on the family's fairly new VCR.  Well that was my first introduction - knowing nothing of the series.  I ended up watching and recording all of the productions they made, PC, VDT and SC and watched and rewatched them over and over again until I knew them word for word (still do in fact! 🤣).  It was a couple of years later, when I was about 8 or so, that I got a couple of Narnia books from a book club catalogue, that my mum ordered for me.  The two books had blue tinge and castle on the spine - I don't remember who the cover art was done by but I remember one of the books was VDT.

Later on, when I was 10, my dad bought me my first box set of the books (at a school fundraising dinner auction), the edition with the covers by Stephen Lavis.  From there I read all of the series - several times.  I have particularly fond memories of reading the books whilst driving across from Victoria to Western Australia to visit my grandparents during the summer school holidays.

Well that's how I got introduced to Narnia, and still every time I hear that BBC Narnia theme it brings back lovely memories.  Now I've got 4 children, I have given them each their own complete Chronicles of Narnia editions with the coloured Pauline Baynes illustrations - but when reading to the kids have read the books in publication order, and each of the kids now appear to love and appreciate the books as well.

Posted by: @pete

I have particularly fond memories of reading the books whilst driving across from Victoria to Western Australia to visit my grandparents during the summer school holidays.

Sorry to interrupt the thread — so are you an Aussie, Pete? So am I, though I live in the UK (in Cheshire) most of the time now! I grew up in Victoria too, in the South Gippsland area, a couple of hours' drive SE of Melbourne.

Posted by: @courtenay

Sorry to interrupt the thread — so are you an Aussie, Pete? So am I, though I live in the UK (in Cheshire) most of the time now! I grew up in Victoria too, in the South Gippsland area, a couple of hours' drive SE of Melbourne.

Indeed I am.  Grew up mainly around the Mornington Peninsula, moved to Tasmania for 6 years in my late teens and early twenties - partly because it was like "stepping through a wardrobe" for me !    And also spent another 6 years in Queensland, but Victorian by birth and that's where I've spent most my life - currently in north western Victoria.

I bet you love living in England @courtenay?  I once went there (as a one year old) - spent a whole year in England and Europe and really desire to go back there one day... I have a soft spot for all things English.

On a semi-related note, I often think about when they're scouting for locations to film any new Narnia films, we've certainly got some rich beautiful landscapes here in Australia.

I can't quite remember the age I was, only that I was a kid (maybe 10 or 11-ish?)

One day, my brother and I came home from visiting our maternal grandmother, and our parents had a surprise for us. My mom grabs a hardcover book and tells us she got all of The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis. Now I did not know this title, but my dad -- who grew up on the books -- took The Magician's Nephew that moment to start reading it to us (yes, we were going by the chronological order lol). The moment I heard the first chapter entitled, The Wrong Door, I knew I was in for an adventure. And man, was I immediately pulled in! I got excited to hear a brand new chapter of that book from my dad. Then, he started reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but for some reason the reading sessions came to a pause. I got so impatient, I just picked up the book myself and started reading it lol, and henceforth finished the series myself. So I would talk to my dad about where I was in the book and we'd have discussions (he told me he had read each book seven times each). I still remember my absolute delight and excitement when Walden's adaptation was made, I was gushing throughout the film in the cinema and I still remember everyone's applause at the end. It was also fun to know I had read the book first and could make my own fair judgement on if I thought the film did the story justice or not.

Though I did realize when reading LWW that I had actually encountered Narnia far earlier when I was much, much younger, on a VHS tape -- the animated version of LWW. Although I could never recall the title or story, what stuck out to me was I always remembers there was a young girl who goes to a magical world and made friends with a faun, and feeling sad that her faun friend got turned to stone by an evil witch. I had remembered nothing else beyond that, but it was always in the back of my mind and I always wondered what that was, so when I got to reading LWW I was like "wait a minute... THAT'S IT!" I really feel like that line "a dream of a dream" suits my vague recollection of the story from the cartoon, and it's really a magical feeling to finally have a title and story to go with those faint images and know it was real and not some strange dream haha. 

So while I had at one point thought my first encounter with Narnia were the books (and is my most vivid memory of diving into the series), the cartoon was actually my first encounter.