The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe introduces the fictional land of Narnia. C.S. Lewis published the book in 1950, and it became the first Narnia story released to the public.
The plot follows the Pevensie children—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy—after Lucy discovers a passage through a wardrobe. In Narnia, they encounter talking animals, the White Witch, and Aslan, the great lion who represents the story’s central force of good.
Narnia is not the same setting as Middle-earth, which was created by Lewis’s friend J.R.R. Tolkien. Malacandra and Perelandra belong to Lewis’s Space Trilogy, while Narnia is the shared world of his children’s fantasy series.
The seven Chronicles of Narnia books were not written in the same order as their internal chronology. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe remains the best-known entry point because it introduces the land, its major conflict, and its recurring mythic imagery.