<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> <P> Lewis's publisher, Geoffrey Bles, allowed him to choose the illustrator for the novel and the Narnia series . Lewis chose Pauline Baynes, possibly based on J.R.R. Tolkien's recommendation . Baynes had greatly impressed Tolkien with her illustrations for his Farmer Giles of Ham (1949). However, Baynes claimed that Lewis learned about her work after going into a bookshop and asking for a recommendation for an illustrator who was skilled at portraying both humans and animals . In December 1949, Bles showed Lewis the first drawings for the novel, and Lewis sent Baynes a note congratulating her, particularly on the level of detail . Lewis's appreciation of the illustrations is evident in a letter he wrote to Baynes after The Last Battle won the Carnegie Medal for best children's book of 1956: "is it not rather' our' medal? I'm sure the illustrations were taken into account as well as the text". </P>

When was the lion witch and wardrobe written