THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW
C. S. LEWIS
Illustrated by Pauline Baynes
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by The Bodley Head in 1955
First published by Collins in paperback in 1980
Colour edition first published in 1998
The Magician’s Nephew
Copyright © 1955 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd.
Original interior art by Pauline Baynes; copyright © 1955
C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd.
Coloured interior art by Pauline Baynes; copyright © 1998 by C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd.
Although The Magician’s Nephew was written several years after C.S. Lewis first began THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA®, he wanted it to be read as the first book in the series. HarperCollins is happy to present these books in the order in which Professor Lewis preferred.
The Chronicles of Narnia®, Narnia® and all book titles, characters and locales original to The Chronicles of Narnia are trademarks of C.S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Use without permission is strictly prohibited.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780006716839
Ebook Edition © 2010 ISBN: 9780007325047
Version: 2017-09-25
To the Kilmer Family
Contents
Copyright
The Magician’s Nephew
Chapter One - The Wrong Door
Chapter Two - Digory and his Uncle
Chapter Three - The Wood between the Worlds
Chapter Four - The Bell and the Hammer
Chapter Five - The Deplorable Word
Chapter Six - The Beginning of Uncle Andrew’s Troubles
Chapter Seven - What Happened at the Front Door
Chapter Eight - The Fight at the Lamp-post
Chapter Nine - The Founding of Narnia
Chapter Ten - The First Joke and Other Matters
Chapter Eleven - Digory and his Uncle are Both in Trouble
Chapter Twelve - Strawberry’s Adventure
Chapter Thirteen - An Unexpected Meeting
Chapter Fourteen - The Planting of the Tree
Chapter Fifteen - The End of this Story and the Beginning of all the Others
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
About the Author
Also by Author
THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW
The secret passage to the house next door leads to a brand new world.
NARNIA . . . where horses sometimes grow wings and Talking Beasts are called to life ... a new world full of magic, where the adventures begin.
Digory and Polly meet and become friends one cold, wet summer in London. Their lives burst into adventure when Uncle Andrew, who thinks he is a magician, sends them hurtling to . . . somewhere else. They find their way to a new land – Narnia! But when they awaken an evil sorceress, Polly and Digory are sent on a quest to stop her before she destroys the world they’ve just discovered!
Chapter One
The Wrong Door
This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began.
In those days Mr Sherlock Holmes was still living in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for treasure in the Lewisham Road. In those days, if you were a boy you had to wear a stiff Eton collar every day, and schools were usually nastier than now. But meals were nicer; and as for sweets, I won’t tell you how cheap and good they were, because it would only make your mouth water in vain. And in those days there lived in London a girl called Polly Plummer.
She lived in one of a long row of houses which were all joined together. One morning she was out in the back garden when a boy scrambled up from the garden next door and put his face over the wall. Polly was very surprised because up till now there had never been any children in that house, but only Mr Ketterley and Miss Ketterley, a brother and sister, old bachelor and old maid, living together. So she looked up, full of curiosity. The face of the strange boy was very grubby. It could hardly have been grubbier if he had first rubbed his hands in the earth, and then had a good cry, and then dried his face with his hands. As a matter of fact, this was very nearly what he had been doing.
“Hullo,” said Polly.
“Hullo,” said the boy. “What’s your name?”
“Polly,” said Polly. “What’s yours?”
“Digory,” said the boy.
“I say, what a funny name!” said Polly.
“It isn’t half so funny as Polly,” said Digory.
“Yes, it is,” said Polly.
“No, it isn’t,” said Digory.
“At any rate I do wash my face,” said Polly. “Which is what you need to do; especially