C.S. Lewis published The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950. It was the first-published book in The Chronicles of Narnia, although Lewis later arranged the series’ internal chronology differently in some editions.
The novel follows four siblings—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie—who enter Narnia through a wardrobe. Its plot includes the White Witch, the return of spring, and the great lion Aslan. The book was illustrated by Pauline Baynes.
The date can be confused with the publication years of the other Narnia books. Prince Caspian followed in 1951, while The Voyage of the Dawn Treader appeared in 1952. The complete seven-book sequence was published over the 1950–1956 period.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe became Lewis’s most widely recognized children’s novel. Its mixture of fantasy, adventure, Christian symbolism, and wartime-era family separation helped establish Narnia as a major work of twentieth-century children’s literature.