Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia.

LEWIS, C.S.

$8,200.00

Item Number: 135229

London: Geoffrey Bles, 1951.

First edition of the second book in Lewis’ beloved Narnia series. Octavo, original cloth, cartographic endpapers, illustrated by Pauline Baynes. With an autograph note signed by C.S. Lewis to his PhD student at Cambridge, Anthony Spearing. On Lewis’ Magdalene College, Cambridge letterhead, the note reads in full, “5th Nov. 57 Dear Mr. Spearing, I gather I have been inflicted as you as a “superior” so I suppose we out to meet. Wd. next Friday at 12 suit you? Don’t bother replying if it would. Yours sincerely C. S. Lewis.” The recipient of the letter, Anthony Spearing was assigned to report to Lewis as his PhD supervisor when he arrived as a student at Cambridge the same year Lewis arrived from Oxford as the first occupant of the new chair of Medieval and Renaissance English. He noted that “Lewis was extremely conscientious in commenting in detail on anything I submitted to him, and he most kindly went on doing that after I had ceased to be his supervisee…” (Spearing, C.S. Lewis as a Research Supervisor). Near fine in a very good price-clipped dust jacket. The autograph note is in near fine condition.

Lewis’ beloved Chronicles of Narnia “must be judged the most sustained achievement in fantasy for children by a 20th-century author” (Carpenter & Prichard, 370). The second published of seven novels in the series, Prince Caspian follows the four Pevensie children as they return to Narnia a year following their initial visit to help Narnia’s rightful ruler reclaim his throne. The Narnia tales rank “among the great classics of the [twentieth] century. Adored by children and academics alike, these books are extremely collectable, sought-after, scarce” (Connolly, 186).