Introduction

C. S. Lewis began writing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe perhaps as early as the autumn of 1939. Like many of Lewis's creations, the initial scribbles of LWW may have spent a good bit of time in a drawer, until they were taken out and polished up by Lewis ten years later in 1949. Lewis found it almost as hard to write a second Narnia tale. He began by exploring what had gone on before the White Witch's hundred year winter. How did the lamppost come to be standing in the middle of a wood?

Thus Lewis began writing a story about a boy named Digory. In June 1949 he read a bit of it to Roger Lancelyn Green, his former student and friend, the one who had encouraged him so much in the writing of LWW. What came to be known as the Lefay fragment of The Magician's Nephew had its problems. So once again Lewis set aside, for a time, what would eventually become a promising work.

The next idea which popped into Lewis's mind was that in fairy tales people are often summoned by magic across time and space-but the summoning is always told from the perspective of the magician. What would it be like for the person being summoned? Prince Caspian was born as an answer to that question and it was originally titled Drawn into Narnia. This title was vetoed by the publisher, as authors' titles often are, and so was the second title Lewis came up with-A Horn in Narnia. Of course this second title reflected the fact that it was Queen Susan's magic horn which dragged the four Pevensie children, by magic, back into Narnia.

Lewis initially scribbled some notes for a sequel to LWW. His surviving notations read as follows: "The present tyrants to be Men. Intervening history of Narnia told nominally by the Dwarf but really an abstract of his story which amounts to telling it in my own person."

The manuscript of Prince Caspian was finished by December 1949. Green read and critiqued it, returning it to Lewis by the end of the year. On December 31, 1949 Lewis held a luncheon at Magdalen College, Oxford to meet Pauline Baynes and introduce her to some of his friends. Baynes was chosen to illustrate LWW because Lewis liked her drawings for J. R. R. Tolkien's Father Giles of Ham.

By February 1950 the typescript of Prince Caspian was prepared. At this stage Green read the work again. In addition it was read and enjoyed, at this point, by the children of one Professor Lawson.

Prince Caspian was finally published by Geoffrey Bles on October 15, 1951. It received the following excellent reviews:

Personally I concur with these excellent reviews. Prince Caspian was, perhaps, my favorite Narnia story when I first read it. As a boy I loved the battle scene toward the end and the Telmarine head getting lopped off! More than that, I relished the feeling of nostalgia at the beginning of the book with the Pevensie children returning to a half-remembered Cair Paravel, now in ruins.

Just as in the other Narnia tales, there is much spiritual food in Prince Caspian. Lewis once remarked that this story was about the "restoration of the true religion after a corruption". But rather than tell what spiritual themes I have discovered in Prince Caspian, let the reader discover those themes for himself or herself. The story should be enjoyed for itself, and as it is so enjoyed, either by child or adult reader, the spiritual themes will emerge to the reader's growing consciousness.

Discussion Questions

1. For those who read Prince Caspian as children, how is it different reading the book as an adult?
2. What bits of Lewis' own life experiences do you find interjected into the story? How does this affect your enjoyment of the book?
3. When the Pevensie children return to Narnia they enter a world where many no longer believe in Aslan nor in the existence of Kings Peter and Edmund and Queens Susan and Lucy. Do you see any parallels to our own world? What do you think Lewis' message is in this to adults?
4. What do you think the writing on the Stone Table was that had been worn away by ages of wind and rain and snow?
5. Trufflehunter, Trumpkin and Nikabrik all seem to represent different types of people that inhabit this new Narnia of unbelief. How would you characterize each of their approaches to life?
6. What do you think Lewis intends by Lucy's comment: "Wouldn't it be dreadful if some day in our own world, at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here, and still looked like men, so that you'd never know which were which?"?
7. Lucy's character represents the predicament of believers living in an age of unbelief. How would you describe her predicament? What course of action do Aslan, and Lewis, recommend for such believers?
8. What do you think of Aslan's statement to Lucy: "Every year you grow, you will find me bigger."?
9. What do you think of Trufflehunter's statement: "It's all one calling on him [Aslan] and on the Kings. They were his servants. If he will not send them (but I make no doubt he will), is he more likely to come himself?"? Do you see any corresponding truth in our world?
10. Some readers of Lewis believe that he was presenting bits of Catholic theology under the guise of fairy tale when he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia. An example of this would be that Peter is the High King of Narnia just as, according to Catholic theology, the Apostle Peter was the first Pope. In Prince Caspian Peter says that he has not come to take Caspian's place but to put him into it ? a sort of apostolic succession if you will. What do you think?
11. What do you think Aslan's breath represents, the breath that causes a kind of greatness to hang about Edmund?
12. What do you make of Trufflehunter's statement about Narnia, "It's not Men's country (who should know that better than me?), but it's a country for a man to be King of?" And the pronouncement at the end of the story that Caspian is to be King and that Narnia would henceforth belong to the Talking Beasts and the Dwarfs and Dryads and Fauns and other creatures quite as much as to the men? Do you think Lewis was an environmentalist?
13. What do you think Lewis means by the statement: "There were many chinks or chasms between worlds in old times, but they have grown rarer."?
14. What does Aslan mean when he says to Caspian, "You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve. And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor in earth. Be content."?
15. What do you think of the violence in Prince Caspian? Do you think it is good or harmful for children to read stories with this kind of violence?
16. What do you think of Prince Caspian as children's literature? Is it well written? Do you have a favorite line you would like to read?
17. What is your favorite part of Prince Caspian? Why?