The Chronicles of Narnia

When I was little, I re-read C.S. Lewis's Narnia books dozens of times
-- quite possibly hundreds of times. I knew perfectly well that the
numbers on my Narnia books (which were numbered in the order the
books were published) didn't follow Narnian chronology. In particular,
books 5 and 6 were out of place; both belonged near the beginning of
the sequence. This never bothered me; in fact, I liked having the
extra information. To find out what order Lewis wrote them (or did
he?) you had to look at the numbers or the copyright dates, but once
you'd read the books, it wasn't hard to remember what order they really
happened in.

On more than one occasion since then, I've refused to replace my poor
weathered Narnia books with a new set -- even if the new set is really
lovely, and has the real Pauline Baynes illustrations -- because
someone out there went and re-numbered them! Now they're numbered
in Narnian chronological order. I was almost as happy being
righteously irritated over this travesty as I would have been with a
shiny new set of Narnian Chronicles.

And now I am re-reading Lewis's Letters to Children (along
with another collection of his letters), and I've come across a mildly
distressing piece of information. I'm sure I've read this letter
before, so I must have just blocked out the fact that C.S. Lewis
preferred the "new" order for the Chronicles. He didn't think the
publication order really meant anything. He wasn't even sure he'd
written the books in the order they were eventually published. It was
all just my own pedantry.

Sigh.