Why Tolkien said No to Narnia

The personal differences between renowned authors J.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis go deeper than issues of analogy and allegory. They go to the roots of Christianity.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008

By Dwight Longenecker

If I had a time machine that could not only set me down not only in a particular date, but a particular place, I’d choose the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford on a Tuesday night in 1950 when C.S.Lewis was reading selections from his Chronicles of Narnia. He’d be there before a roaring fire with Tolkien and the other Inklings who gathered at the Bird and Baby, to drink beer, smoke pipes and read excerpts from their work. Tolkien would listen quietly, then pitch in with his intelligent and well-aimed criticisms.

Alas, I would not only need a machine that visited the past, but a machine that changed the past. The scholars tell us that the Inklings had pretty much gone their separate ways by 1949, and Lewis’ Narnia stories were never read aloud to the group. Nevertheless, Tolkien did have firm opinions about his friend’s children’s stories. He didn’t like them.

Why did Tolkien dislike Narnia? Was it a case of sour grapes? By the mid 1950s Lewis’ Narnia tales were being written and published. By this time Lewis was a hugely popular writer while Tolkien had only just published his masterpiece, and it would be another ten years until it hit the big time. About that time Tolkien and Lewis’ famous friendship cooled. the rest image