Royal Mail celebrates the 75th anniversary of ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ book series

By David Hartwig

A May 22 stamp issue from Great Britain’s Royal Mail celebrates C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia fantasy book series and recognizes the 75th anniversary of the publication of the first book in the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Published between 1950 and 1956, the seven novels of the series take place in the fictional land of Narnia, a world filled with talking animals, mythical creatures and battles between good and evil.

Children play a central role in the books, starting in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which children discover a portal to Narnia in the magic wardrobe cabinet of a country home where they are sent to escape the London Blitz during World War II.

Scenes from each of the seven novels are depicted on stamps denominated at the first-class rate (currently £1.70) in a set of eight. Royal Mail presents these stamps in chronological order by the novels’ publication dates in two horizontal se-tenant (side-by-side) strips of four.

Two stamps in one strip of four show scenes from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), the first and most famous book in the series, with the other two showing scenes from Prince Caspian (1951) and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952).

The stamps in the other strip feature scenes from The Silver Chair (1953), The Horse and His Boy (1954), The Magician’s Nephew (1955) and The Last Battle (1956). Text on each stamp provides the title of the novel from which the scene is depicted.

For the stamps in the set of eight, Royal Mail commissioned Keith Robinson, a British illustrator of children and young adult books, for the illustrations.

On his website, Robinson said: “When I was small I was desperate to get to Narnia. I had a habit of walking into other people’s wardrobes, which must have been awkward for my parents. Eventually I discovered the next best way of travelling to other worlds was to lose myself in drawing them.”

A souvenir sheet in the May 22 issue specifically marks 75 years since the publication of the series’ first novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, with four additional first-class stamps featuring original illustrations from the novel by Pauline Baynes, who illustrated all seven of the books in the series.

A presentation pack included with the Chronicles of Narnia issue contains all 12 stamps from the issue and discusses how C. S. Lewis developed the fantasy series.

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