Lewis was in his mid-50s when he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia. In his memoir, he comments that he had never read an autobiography in which the author’s younger years were not the most interesting and important. The Narnia books seem to be a literary effort of Lewis to reach back into his childhood and convince young people not to be led away from the church much as he was by his governess and the horrors of World War I. Childless and unmarried throughout most of his adulthood, Lewis yearned to engage young people in the fantasy world he created, though which he introduced them to his spiritual ideas.

Lewis published his first Narnia book, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, scarcely five years after the Allies defeated Nazi Germany. While the brutal, harsh lessons of the war could not be translated into a palatable narrative acceptable for young people, Lewis managed to create an alternate world in which the senseless cruelty, brutality, and capriciousness of war could be apprehended by children. As a child, Lewis had been intrigued by the legends and myths of distant lands as well as make-believe locations.