<P> In August 1948, during a visit by an American writer, Chad Walsh, Lewis talked vaguely about completing a children's book he had begun "in the tradition of E. Nesbit". After this conversation not much happened until the beginning of the next year . Then everything changed . In his essay "It All Began With a Picture" Lewis continues: "At first I had very little idea how the story would go . But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it . I think I had been having a good many dreams of lions about that time . Apart from that, I don't know where the Lion came from or why he came . But once he was there, he pulled the whole story together, and soon he pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him ." </P> <P> The major ideas of the book echo lines Lewis had written fourteen years earlier in his alliterative poem The Planets: </P> <P>... Of wrath ended And woes mended, of winter passed And guilt forgiven, and good fortune Jove is master; and of jocund revel, Laughter of ladies . The lion - hearted...are Jove's children . </P> <P> On 10 March 1949 Roger Lancelyn Green dined with Lewis at Magdalen College . After the meal Lewis read two chapters from his new children's story to Green . Lewis asked Green's opinion of the tale and Green said that he thought it was good . The manuscript of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was complete by the end of March 1949 . Lucy Barfield received it by the end of May . When on 16 October 1950 Geoffrey Bles in London published the first edition, three new "chronicles", Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Horse and His Boy, had also been completed . </P>

Characters from the lion the witch and the wardrobe movie