C.S. Lewis’s childhood toy-world stories were collected under the name Boxen.
Lewis and his brother Warren created an elaborate imaginary world during their childhood, combining two earlier settings called Animal-Land and India. Lewis wrote stories about anthropomorphic animals, kings, wars, and politics in this invented world. The name Boxen blends the names of the two older settings.
Boxen is not the same as Narnia, although both worlds contain talking animals and invented histories. Narnia was created decades later for Lewis’s published Chronicles of Narnia. The Boxen stories were childhood writings and were not published during Lewis’s lifetime.
Warren Lewis later preserved the manuscripts, and a selection appeared in print in 1985 as Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C.S. Lewis. The collection gives readers an early glimpse of Lewis’s developing interest in myth, storytelling, and imaginary worlds.