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Is that story still hidden in a pile of unpublished material?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.