Compiled by Brian Sibley
When C S Lewis started writing his first story about Narnia, he began with the words: "This book is about four children whose names were Ann, Martin, Rose, and Peter. But it is most about Peter who was the youngest." Peter was the only one of C S Lewis’ original names for the children to be used in the books and he was the eldest not the youngest.
C S Lewis probably chose the name ‘Peter’ because it had been the name of a pet mouse that he had kept when he was a young boy.
The young C S Lewis wrote stories about a heroic little character called Sir Peter Mouse who was inspired by his pet mouse. Sir Peter, who carries a sword and conquers the nearby country of Cat-land, later became Reepicheep in Prince Caspian.
The family name of the four children in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian was ‘Pevensie’, although the name doesn’t appear until the third book written by C S Lewis, The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’.
In choosing the name, ‘Pevensie’, C S Lewis may have been thinking of the village of Pevensey on the Sussex coast, which was the historic site of an early Roman fort built to protect England from invasion. It is also where Duke William the Bastard of Normandy came ashore for his invasion which culminated in the Battle of Hastings.
C S Lewis’ dedicated The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to his goddaughter, Lucy Barfield, and Lucy became the first of the four children to find a way into Narnia.
No one knows for certain why C S Lewis called his other world ‘Narnia’. He may have come across a reference to the Italian town of Nequinium which the Romans renamed Narnia, after the river Nar, when they conquered it in 299 BC.
When C S Lewis was a child he lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and had an Irish nanny named Lizzie Endicott who told him wonderful bedtime stories about giants and leprechauns. Lizzie and her stories probably inspired the nurse in Prince Caspian who told the prince tales about Old Narnia.
C S Lewis showed the first chapters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to his friend J R R Tolkien, but the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings didn’t like the story and Lewis almost didn’t write any more.
It was C S Lewis’ good friend, the writer Roger Lancelyn Green, who encouraged the author to complete the first book about Narnia and, later, suggested giving the seven books the overall title, ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’.
Although J R R Tolkien didn’t really like C S Lewis’ first book about Narnia, he did suggest approaching the illustrator Pauline Baynes who had recently illustrated his own book, Farmer Giles of Ham.
One of C S Lewis’ favourite books when he was a boy was Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, a character who inspired Pattertwig the talkative squirrel in Prince Caspian.
Following an outline of Narnian History that C S Lewis drew up after writing the books, Kings Peter, King Edmund, Queen Susan and Queen Lucy ruled Narnia for 15 years before hunting the White Stag and finding their way back through the wardrobe into this world.
After writing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C S Lewis started work on a second book: it was a story about a boy called Digory that would eventually be published as The Magician’s Nephew. While he was thinking about this story, he came up with another idea about children who get pulled into a magic picture of a ship and that later became The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’. But both these ideas had to wait when he thought of the story for Prince Caspian,
Prince Caspian began as an idea jotted down in one of C S Lewis’ notebooks a few months after he had finished The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This what he wrote: “Sequel to LWW: The present tyrants to be Men. Intervening history of Narnia told nominally by the Dwarf…”
C S Lewis’ original title for the book we know as Prince Caspian was Drawn into Narnia but his publishers didn’t like it.
Looking for a new title for his second book about Narnia C S Lewis suggested A Horn in Narnia, but then settled on Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia. It is the only book in the series with a subtitle.
The name Aslan comes from the Turkish word for ‘lion’.
In Peter, Susan, Lucy and Edmund’s world the events described in Prince Caspian happen a year after they left Narnia at the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But, according to Narnia time, it is 1,288 years later when they return.
The name Caspian may have been suggested by the Caspian Sea in the Middle East, which is the world’s largest inland sea.
The book, Prince Caspian was dedicated to Mary Clare Havard, the daughter of C S Lewis’ doctor.
In Prince Caspian, one of the animals that help the young prince is the chatterbox squirrel, Pattertwig. This character was originally going to appear in the story that became The Magician’s Nephew. Pattertwig was going to talk to the boy Digory and - as he does with Prince Caspian - was going to give him a nut from his secret winter store.
The idea of finding a way into another world through a wardrobe was probably inspired by C S Lewis having read, as a boy, a story by the writer E Nesbit (author of The Railway Children) in which a girl called Amabel* finds a magic railway station in her wardrobe called Bigwardrobeinspareroom.
Prince Caspian discovers that his uncle Miraz became ruler of Narnia by murdering his brother (Caspian’s father) King Caspian IX. As C S Lewis would have known this plot is similar to the events in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.
In Prince Caspian, Peter finds the sword that he was given by Father Christmas in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and with which he killed the Wolf and was knighted by Aslan. For the first time, we discover that the name of the sword is ‘Rhindon’.
The old Badger in Prince Caspian is named Trufflehunter because badgers are known to be good at hunting out truffles, the edible fungus that grows underground in woods and forests.
As a student, C S Lewis studied Greek and Latin and incorporated characters from the mythologies of ancient Greece and Rome into the Chronicles of Narnia, such as the wine-god Bacchus and his companion, Silenus, as well as fauns, centaurs and the tree and water nymphs known as dryads and naiads.
Narnia has its own stars and planets including Tarva the Lord of Victory and Alambil, the Lady of Peace and in Narnia.
The word ‘how’ in the name Aslan’s How comes from an Old Norse word meaning ‘hill’.
From C S Lewis’ chronological history of Narnia, we know that when he became King, Caspian ruled the country for 53 years before his death.
*Note: Spelling is Amabel not Annabel