The Magician's Nephew
By C. S. Lewis
 
First edition, first impression. London: The Bodley Head, 1955.
 
Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in silver. Line illustrations throughout by Pauline Baynes. With the original pictorial dust jacket, also designed by Baynes, unclipped and priced 8s 6d net, with the 3/3275 code to the foot of the front flap.
 
Some spotting to the top edge, but the boards and contents exceptionally clean and fresh throughout, and free from any names or inscriptions. A hint of a spine slant and very slight bowing to the upper board. Very good or better.
 
The jacket is similarly very good or better, with a couple of very small nicks and chips to the top edge and some rubbing in places, primarily to the spine ends. The lower panel, frequently found with substantial spotting, is very clean, with only a few spots visible.
 
Lewis set out to explain how a lamp-post came to stand in the middle of a Narnian wood, and began the book in 1949, after finishing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He read two chapters of that first attempt to Roger Lancelyn Green in June 1949 and abandoned it later the same year; the surviving portion is known as the Lefay Fragment. He returned to the story in 1951 and completed it in February 1954. Sixth in order of publication but first in the internal chronology of the sequence, it gives the creation of Narnia, the origins of Jadis, and the provenance of the wardrobe itself, made from the timber of a London apple tree grown from Narnian fruit. This was the first of the Narnia books published by The Bodley Head, the previous five having been issued by Geoffrey Bles; only The Last Battle, announced as forthcoming on the rear panel of the present jacket, followed under the same imprint. Greta Gerwig's adaptation, produced for Netflix with international theatrical distribution by Sony, is scheduled for theatrical release on 12 February 2027.