The Magician's Nephew

The Magician's Nephew is a portal fantasy by C. S. Lewis, published in 1955 by The Bodley Head. It is the sixth of the seven novels in The Chronicles of Narnia, and in recent editions, which are sequenced by the chronology of the story rather than by publication, it appears as the first volume. Like the others it was illustrated by Pauline Baynes, whose work has been retained in many later printings.

The Bodley Head was a new publisher for the series, taking over from Geoffrey Bles, who had issued the previous five. The novel is a prequel. Its middle third covers the creation of Narnia by Aslan, centred on a section of a London lamp-post brought there by the accidental visitors in 1900, and the children then take part in the beginning of Narnia's history a thousand years before the events of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The frame story is set in England and involves two children caught up in experimental travel through what the book calls the wood between the worlds, which is the device that connects the ordinary setting to the created one.