Vote for the Best Narnia Cover of All Time!
NarniaWeb is on a mission to find the best Chronicles of Narnia book cover of all time… and we need your help!
We started this process with all the Narnia covers we could find. Our Patreon supporters helped us narrow it down to 70 (10 per book). Now, we are turning the voting over to all NarniaWebbers around the world.
To participate, rate each of these covers. This should take you about ten minutes to complete. A free Google account is required (emails and personal information will be kept private).
The deadline for your submission is December 28.
The covers with the highest scores will be featured in a series of “March Madness” style videos on Talking Beasts: The Narnia Podcast in March, so stay tuned!
So cool! I voted!!!
I was a little sad not so see the goofy covers of the Silver Chair where Rillian’s hair is green.
Can’t believe that the single best set of covers didn’t even make the list!
The 1980s cover designs by Stephen Lavis (on the book editions published by Lions Press) are just absolute definitive Narnia for me. Nothing else even comes close.
This was my main set of books growing up, and while I kind of hated the covers designs at the time (the older copies from the local library had much more appealing covers) they do now hold a bit of soft spot in my heart. There is something quite striking about their bold use of colour and exaggerated designs.
Oh my word, me too! Those were the editions I grew up on (except for LWW, which we had as a Puffin paperback with the Pauline Baynes illustration). I love those covers and I’m stunned that not one of them made the list — I’d have given them all 5 (or at the very least 4) for sure. Maybe I should have joined in with the initial voting for the shortlist!!
I share your disappointment… those are the ones I still read!
I liked the covers with Pauline Baynes’ artwork the best. The fiftieth anniversary of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe had illustrations in color, which I thought was great. My own hardcover editions of the seven books have the original illustrations by Pauline Baynes in black and white, but the covers are by a different artist. The books are of good quality and I am quite satisfied with them. 🙂
My favourite covers are the ones with the brown borders filled with the little images from the series. Unfortunately, I never got all 7 in that cover so my books don’t match. I have 5 of them in that cover: but Prince Caspian, Voyage, and Silver Chair have the BBC images for the cover rather than the paintings. Plus there are inserts with promotional photos from the series. I honestly find pretty much all of the other covers to be hideous. I was never happy with my Last Battle copy’s cover. My The Horse and the Boy at least had the matching letters for “Narnia”. The first edition covers are really nice too.
Oh, I hated those. My Last Battle copy is in that and I never liked it. My school library had the whole set in that cover and I really didn’t like it. I used to have LWW in that cover but I found a copy with the cover I liked so I got rid of it. That one wasn’t too bad but I remember being put off by The Silver Chair’s especially. I did pick up a copy of that cover for Prince Caspian for my daughter just so she could have her own copy. Her version of Voyage is much, much worse though. And it doesn’t have any illustrations inside it! How can you have a Narnia book without the illustrations? They are just as much a part of Narnia as CS Lewis’ words.
There are so many things that I love about the Stephen Lavis covers, both now and when i was a child.
The photo-realism of the paintings makes Narnia feel like a real tangible place. The slightly darker tone to them gives a foreboding sense of mystery. The sumptuous level of detail in the paintings provides so many intriguing little things to entice you in.
I even love the fact that they don’t say “The Chronicles of Narnia” in the title header. As such, I first encountered all of the Narnia stories independently and somewhat out of order from the local library. There was just something really special about exploring the universe for myself and finding all of the remaining books to piece together the entire puzzle. It’s kind of like how amazing it was to watch the original Star Wars movie as a child with it opening up on “Episode IV” – you just feel like you’ve been thrust into this amazing ongoing adventure, and it didn’t even matter that there were no actual Episodes 1, 2 and 3 (it was probably better for it indeed!)
So many to choose from. While I only have one edition of the Narnia series, I’ve seen other covers online. I don’t know if this is recent but there is a cover on The Last Battle where Tash is picking up Rishda and Tirian is standing there watching.
I’m not surprised that they made the list. In 70 years, not many of the others have come close to topping her artwork.
Me too! I think we’re all talking about the 1970s Collier Books covers? I also have a soft spot for these because I remember checking them out from our local library as a kid (~30 years ago). Tried to vote them up in the Patreon voting round, but I guess the dated look outweighed the nostalgia factor.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/43/5d/cc/435dcc508377ad302b50e383ee473177.jpg
I like the intricate borders with images of Diggory close up holding a silver apple at the silver apple tree for MN, and with Eustace next to Jill with bow and arrow drawn close up for LB (with bear eagle and unicorn behind them). These 2 are my favorites for those 2 books. Unfortuantely it looks like these are the only 2 books of that edition in this list and I can’t find images of the others. Does anyone know where I could find images of the other books in that edition? Or what that edition is called so that I could search for it? Thanks!
Those books with the brown borders are the 1980 Editions published by Ted Smart.
If you Google those terms, you should be able to find the rest.