Narnia Fans » Companion to Narnia

In 1949, the year he finished writing “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” C. S. Lewis was leading at least four different lives. His reputation as a Christian apologist had already been launched with several books and a series of BBC radio speeches. He was a charismatic Oxford professor, an expert in Milton and Spenser. He was a generous host who presided over long, drunken nights of bawdy talk and badinage. And he was the head of a household that, even by today’s standards, would be considered unconventional. His domestic partner for nearly three decades was a woman 25 years his senior, whom he called “my mother,” but who was not, in fact, his mother. In 1949, Janie Moore was in declining health and crankier than ever. “I am,” wrote Lewis at the time, “a man in chains.”

Biographers suggest that Lewis’s foray into children’s literature was an attempt to escape, to recover his own boyhood and, through myth and metaphor, dive more deeply into his faith. Whatever the impulse, his friend J.R.R. Tolkien thought he’d missed the mark. “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” was a hodgepodge of images, Tolkien said, an incomplete rendering of an imaginary world. But never mind. Each year, for seven years, Lewis released another volume, making him the J. K. Rowling of his time, and, in the minds of Narnia fans at least, erasing whatever he was before. Since 1950, the Narnia books have sold 95 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 41 languages. Now, thanks to the movie, devotees can brace themselves for a blizzard of books and biographies, including a revision of Paul F. Ford’s “Companion to Narnia,” a guidebook to Lewis’s fantasyland. First British editions of Narnia books are selling on the Internet for $15,000 to $20,000, says Edwin W. Brown, a Lewis collector, “and they’re not perfect.”

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Sam sent us a link to a Lecture Video on the Chronicles of Narnia. Here’s his e-mail:

The following is a link to a video recorded this afternoon (October 12, 2005) at Moorpark College in Southern California. Paul F. Ford (author of the book Companion to Narnia) and his wife Janice Daurio (my philosophy professor, and recently published in Narnia and Philosophy) do a one hour long talk on Narnia and Lewis. I thought the other Narnia fans out there might find it interesting.

http://video.moorparkcollege.edu:8080/ramgen/jdaurio.rm

They talk about many interesting things, from the life of Lewis, to the order of the books, and recommend reading the books in the original written order of 245-3617 (they wrote it like a phone number to make it easier to remember). It’s quite a good lecture and I very highly recommend viewing it. Especially for educators.

Paul F. Ford and his wife will be on a Disney Channel program, that will run an hour and a half, an ABC Special called “The World of Narnia.” This will air sometime between Thanksgiving and the Super Bowl. It’s also going to appear on what Paul F. Ford says will be a FOUR DVD set of the film.

Order Narnia and Philosophy from Amazon.com
Order Companion to Narnia from Amazon.com

The upcoming movie adaptation of CS Lewis’s book, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is expected to set a new precedent. Far from sitting back and watching, publisher HarperCollins is working closely with filmmaker Walden Media, unleashing a massive, worldwide marketing drive for the books, timed to coincide with the film – and not only for The Chronicles of Narnia, but most of Lewis’s other books as well.

“This is a giant blockbuster for us,” said Susan Katz, president and publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books. “The Chronicles of Narnia was already important and big for us, but now with the movie it’s taking on a new life of its own. We have 25 movie tie-in editions – it’s a huge event.”

Sales of The Chronicles of Narnia have been rising since last spring, when the movie trailer of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was released.

“We’ve been happily surprised by how strong sales of the Narnia books have been,” said Joe Monti, children’s buyer for Barnes & Noble. But it’s not only Lewis’s children’s books that are selling well. “It’s also his non-fiction,” said Monti. “It’s surpassed our expectations at every stage.”

HarperCollins is pumping out 170 CS Lewis-related book titles in more than 60 countries – including 140 related to The Chronicles of Narnia. The number represents a vast variety of editions and companion volumes. Lewis’s own books are only the beginning. Besides various editions of The Chronicles of Narnia, there’s a six-volume box set of Lewis’s mostly Christian books for adults, including Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, Miracles and The Problem of Pain. There’s also a new adult biography titled The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of CS Lewis by Lewis scholar Alan Jacobs.

Then there are the extras, which include A Year With CS Lewis: Daily Readings from his Classic Works; the Mere Christianity Journal, a faux-leather-bound study guide with excerpts and blank pages for reader reflections; Beyond the Wardrobe: The Official Guide to Narnia; and Companion to Narnia, an alphabetised reference book to the world of the Narnia books. And there are not one but two glossy photo books about the making of the movie.

HarperCollins and Walden Media have been working closely together on the marketing surrounding the new film, sharing artwork and promotional plans and co-ordinating timing. Cary Granat, chief executive officer of Walden Media, says: “The more they are able to get people to read the books, the bigger the base to grow the film. As more people want to see the film and read the books, it will extend the franchise. It’s a cultural phenomenon that needs to be managed at all levels.”

However well planned, it’s doubtful such a sprawling programme could work with anyone but Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), who published more than 100 books. An Oxford don and medievalist, his uniquely diverse output makes him – if such a thing is possible – a potentially bigger literary phenomenon than his Oxford friend and colleague JRR Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Unlike Tolkien, Lewis wrote for a wider range of readers, both children and adults, including a science fiction trilogy and an agonised memoir of the death of his wife, A Grief Observed (that love story has already been made into a movie, 1993’s Shadowlands, with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger).

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is not the first co-ordinated effort between a publisher and a filmmaker. Boston-based Houghton Mifflin – US publisher of JRR Tolkien – worked closely with New Line Cinema on the three blockbuster movies based on The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Houghton began to see a huge bump in sales as soon as the first movie trailer was released in 2001. Tolkien’s books have sold about 80 million copies, going back to The Hobbit in 1937. About 25 million of those were sold between 2001 and 2003, when the three movies were released.

No one knows how big sales of CS Lewis books will be as a result of the film, but if the Tolkien explosion is any indication, it may prove hard to overestimate.

Author Paul F. Ford is currently working on both the Fifth Edition of “Companion to Narnia” and a new “Pocket Companion to Narnia” for release in the fall of 2005.

He’s planning on simplifying the referencing system in the book. Each reference to a Narnian book will contain the roman numeral of the chapter, and two arabic numerals. The first numeral refers to the whole paragraph counting from the beginning of the chapter, and the second refers to the whole paragraph counting from the end. This should make it easier to zero in on exactly what you are looking for. This should help with even the foreign language editions of the books now, as well.

Here’s where you come in. What he would like to have, is advice on what needs to be added, improved, and the like. What characters might be missing? Is there anything you’d like to see added? Is there anything that you’d like more clearly stated or that you didn’t quite understand? If you have any suggestions, constructive in nature only, send an e-mail to companion_to_narnia@hotmail.com. It’ll help Paul F. Ford to make Companion to Narnia even better than ever before!

Take advantage of this chance to help out with this new edition!

Once again, E-Mail: companion_to_narnia@hotmail.com