Prince Caspian

Prince Caspian, originally published as Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia, is a high fantasy novel by the British author C. S. Lewis, published by Geoffrey Bles in 1951. It was the second of the seven novels in The Chronicles of Narnia, published between 1950 and 1956, and Lewis had finished writing it in 1949, before the first book appeared. In recent editions sequenced by internal chronology it is volume four.

Like the other books in the series it was illustrated by Pauline Baynes, whose work has been retained in many later editions. The novel brings the four Pevensie children of the first book back to Narnia, a year later in England but thirteen hundred years later in Narnian time, which is why the country they find bears little resemblance to the one they ruled.

The political situation is unusual for the series. Human beings, the Telmarines, are in control, and the talking animals and mythical beings are subjugated, which makes the return of the old order a matter of restoration rather than discovery. Caspian summons the children with a magic horn in order to settle the conflict, and the book's climax is a war rather than a journey.