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and less selfish old man than he had ever been before. But he always liked to get visitors alone in the billiard-room and tell them stories about a mysterious lady, a foreign royalty, with whom he had driven about London. “A devilish temper she had,” he would say. “But she was a dem fine woman, sir, a dem fine woman.”

       THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE

Dedication

      To Lucy Barfield

      My Dear Lucy,

      I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be

      your affectionate Godfather,

      C. S. Lewis

      Contents

Dedication

Chapter One: Lucy Looks into a Wardrobe

Chapter Two: What Lucy Found There

Chapter Three: Edmund and the Wardrobe

Chapter Four: Turkish Delight

Chapter Five: Back on This Side of the Door

Chapter Six: Into the Forest

Chapter Seven: A Day with the Beavers

Chapter Eight: What Happened after Dinner

Chapter Nine: In the Witch’s House

Chapter Ten: The Spell Begins to Break

Chapter Eleven: Aslan Is Nearer

Chapter Twelve: Peter’s First Battle

Chapter Thirteen: Deep Magic from the Dawn of Time

Chapter Fourteen: The Triumph of the Witch

Chapter Fifteen: Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time

Chapter Sixteen: What Happened about the Statues

Chapter Seventeen: The Hunting of the White Stag

Chapter One

       Lucy Looks into a Wardrobe

      ONCE THERE WERE FOUR CHILDREN WHOSE NAMES were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids. They were sent to the house of an old Professor who lived in the heart of the country, ten miles from the nearest railway station and two miles from the nearest post office. He had no wife and he lived in a very large house with a housekeeper called Mrs. Macready and three servants. (Their names were Ivy, Margaret and Betty, but they do not come into the story much.) He himself was a very old man with shaggy white hair which grew over most of his face as well as on his head, and they liked him almost at once; but on the first evening when he came out to meet them at the front door he was so odd-looking that Lucy (who was the youngest) was a little afraid of him, and Edmund (who was the next youngest) wanted to laugh and had to keep on pretending he was blowing his nose to hide it.

      As soon as they had said good night to the Professor and gone upstairs on the first night, the boys came into the girls’ room and they all talked it over.

      “We’ve fallen on our feet and no mistake,” said Peter. “This is going to be perfectly splendid. That old chap will let us do anything we like.”

      “I think he’s an old dear,” said Susan.

      “Oh, come off it!” said Edmund, who was tired and pretending not to be tired, which always made him bad-tempered. “Don’t go on talking like that.”

      “Like what?” said Susan; “and anyway, it’s time you were in bed.”

      “Trying to talk like Mother,” said Edmund. “And who are you to say when I’m to go to bed? Go to bed yourself.”

      “Hadn’t we all better go to bed?” said Lucy. “There’s sure to be a row if we’re heard talking here.”

      “No, there won’t,” said Peter. “I tell you this is the sort of house where no one’s going to mind what we do. Anyway, they won’t hear us. It’s about ten minutes’ walk from here down to that dining room, and any amount of stairs and passages in between.”

      “What’s that noise?” said Lucy suddenly. It was a far larger house than she had ever been in before and the thought of all those long passages and rows of doors leading into empty rooms was beginning to make her feel a little creepy.

      “It’s only a bird, silly,” said Edmund.

      “It’s an owl,” said Peter. “This is going to be a wonderful place for birds. I shall go to bed now. I say, let’s go and explore tomorrow. You might find anything in a place like this. Did you see those mountains as we came along? And the woods? There might be eagles. There might be stags. There’ll be hawks.”

      “Badgers!” said Lucy.

      “Foxes!” said Edmund.

      “Rabbits!” said Susan.

      But when next morning came there was a steady rain falling, so thick that when you looked out of the window you could see neither the mountains nor the woods nor even the stream in the garden.

      “Of