Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on C. S. Lewis's The Magician’s Nephew. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
The Magician’s Nephew: Introduction
The Magician’s Nephew: Plot Summary
The Magician’s Nephew: Detailed Summary & Analysis
The Magician’s Nephew: Themes
The Magician’s Nephew: Quotes
The Magician’s Nephew: Characters
The Magician’s Nephew: Symbols
The Magician’s Nephew: Theme Wheel
Brief Biography of C. S. Lewis
Historical Context of The Magician’s Nephew
Other Books Related to The Magician’s Nephew
- Full Title: The Magician’s Nephew
- When Written: 1949–1954
- Where Written: Oxford, U.K.
- When Published: 1955
- Literary Period: Modern
- Genre: Fantasy Novel, Children’s Literature
- Setting: London; Narnia
- Climax: Digory resists the Witch’s temptation and brings the magic apple back to Narnia.
- Antagonist: Queen Jadis/The Witch
- Point of View: Third Person
Extra Credit for The Magician’s Nephew
Parallel Histories. While approximately 40 years are supposed to have passed in the reader’s world between the events of The Magician’s Nephew and those of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (roughly 1900–1940), C. S. Lewis’s manuscript “An Outline of Narnian History” states that 1,000 Narnian years elapsed during the same period of time.
Inklings Inspiration. Lewis was prompted to write The Magician’s Nephew when Roger Lancelyn Green, another children’s author who frequented meetings of the Inklings, asked him why there was a lamp-post in the middle of Narnia in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.