A while back I speculated on what Narnian female names might have been like, drawing from names that were given to Victorian-era English girls. Since there’s a paucity of names for human Narnian commoners I came up with another list, shown below. (This is a sore point with me. I don’t like to be reading …
Here’s some more mythical sea perils that Lewis left out of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Or, as a reader suggested to me, might have inspired him. Part 1 is here. I also forgot a trope that relates to giant whirlpools. Which is — a trip to Atlantis! More than one pulpy story, comic …
The Voyage of The Dawn Treader has an episodic structure consisting of the many adventures Caspian, Lucy, Edmund, and Eustace have while seeking the lost lords across the Eastern Sea. Many of them derive from myths, fables and earlier fairy tales, like the encounter with the sea serpent, the isle of the dragon, and the …
Ramandu is one of those Narnian characters who plays a significant role in the book but not in artists’ depictions. Pauline Baynes’ original illustration remains the best one I’ve seen: a grave, elderly man in a robe of silver fleece, with a white beard that falls to his feet… which are bare, in the manner …
These Evergreen Library hardcover versions of The Chronicles came out in 1965. All seven books had been released by this point, but for this series, only these five were published. The cover artist was Giorgio de Gaspari. I’d never seen this artwork before and was struck by how different it was from post-1970s depictions. For …
… the spells began straight away, and at first there was nothing very important in them. They were cures for warts (by washing your hands in moonlight in a silver basin) and toothache and cramp, and a spell for taking a swarm of bees. The picture of the man with toothache was so lifelike that …
This Dutch language edition of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader does away with the ship’s poetic name, calling it simply “drakenschip.” Which means … dragon ship … which calls to mind … Vikings! Not sure what the problem with translation was. This book is interesting as well for the illustration, which is one I …
If you are like me, you probably wish The Voyage of the Dawn Treader had gone and on, with Caspian and crew exploring ever more exotic places. That book remains unwritten, but here’s some randomly generated islands they might have explored, if they’d had time. Other Islands of Narnia Ashvows: Several Star People live …
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