Tales Before Narnia
The Roots of Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction
Chapter 1
The Aunt and Amabel
by E. Nesbit
Lewis enjoyed the writings of E. Nesbit from the time he was a child. When he began writing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, he told a friend that he had begun a children's book "in the tradition of E. Nesbit."
"The Aunt and Amabel" prefigures Lewis's first Narnia adventure in that
the young girl Amabel enters another world by means of a wardrobe, finding therein a magical train station called "Bigwardrobeinspareroom." In chapter 2 of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the faun Mr. Tumnus similarly speaks of "the far land of Spare Oom" and of "the bright city of War Drobe."
"The Aunt and Amabel" was first published in Blackie's Children's Annual (1909), and collected in The Magic World (1912).
It is not pleasant to be a fish out of water. To be a cat in water is not what any one would desire. To be in a temper is uncomfortable. And no one can fully taste the joys of life if he is in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit. But by far the most uncomfortable thing to be in is disgrace, sometimes amusingly called Coventry by the people who are not in it.
We have all been the ...
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