C.S. Lewis creates the fictional world of Narnia in The Magician’s Nephew.
Published in 1955, The Magician’s Nephew is the sixth Narnia book by publication order but the first in the series’ internal chronology. Its opening sections follow Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, whose experiments with magical rings lead them to other worlds.
The children witness the destruction of Charn and then arrive in a dark, empty place where Aslan sings Narnia into existence. The book therefore functions as an origin story for the land, its talking animals, and its distinctive magical history.
Readers sometimes assume The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe depicts Narnia’s beginning because it was published first. Instead, that earlier publication introduces Narnia from the perspective of children visiting an already established world. The Magician’s Nephew supplies the series’ creation narrative and explains the origin of the wardrobe’s wood.