Once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen in Narnia
My friends and I were excited, back in 1964, when a new Edgar Rice Burroughs novel came out–15 years after his death. It was unearthed among his papers.
And of course “new” works by J.R.R. Tolkien came out pretty regularly, rescued from oblivion by the author’s son, Christopher.
But what I want to know is: did C.S. Lewis write another Chronicle of Narnia that has not yet been discovered among the vast amount of papers that he left behind? And we’ve also heard that he meant to go back to the published Chronicles and make certain corrections.
A blog called A Pilgrim in Narnia ( https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2016/07/06/linkscsl/ ) has a list of “lost” C.S. Lewis writings that have been recently published; and there’s still a great deal left that has to be sifted through. Letters, notebooks, ideas for stories or novels or lectures, some poetry–there is a raft of material that Lewis, like his friend Tolkien, never got around to publishing in his lifetime.
If there were an eighth Chronicle of Narnia, what would it be? I know I’m not the only one who’d like to see how Queen Susan ever got back to Narnia. In The Last Battle, she is missing: she has given up Narnia. But Aslan did say, “Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.” So either he’s wrong, which is not possible, or else there was another Narnia novel that badly needed to be written. In fact, some of C.S. Lewis’ legion of fans have already tried their hand at it: but I think it needs the master’s touch.
Is that story still hidden in a pile of unpublished material? No expert seems willing to bet on it.
But I wonder. Yes, I wonder.
Have you considered writing ‘Narnia’s Final Chronicle’? You could tie up some loose ends for folks 🙂 And you could just call yourself A C. S. Lewis Fan 🙂 Just think, you’d be the first to know how it all ends lol
I wouldn’t dare.
At my house, we have this collection of audio-book dramas of the Chronicles of Narnia. At the end of the Last Battle, the host says that a boy wrote a letter to C.S. Lewis, asking if he would write another book after the Last Battle. C.S. Lewis had wrote back that he wished it were not so, but he believed the Last Battle was going to be the conclusion to the Chronicles of Narnia.
Nothing after The Last Battle–but what about before? Time poses no constraints on Aslan.
I so would love to read another Narnia novel. Please keep us all posted if you should ever hear of someone finding something like that in and around Mr. Lewis’ papers.