The Silver Trumpet

The Silver Trumpet was the first children’s fantasy story to be published by one of the Inklings. Its early success with the children of Barfield’s friend and fellow Inkling, J.R.R. Tolkien, inspired The Hobbit and C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The fable is at once whimsical, dark and Grimmsian: a märchen and high romance featuring twin princesses, lofty castles, questing princes, a dwarven jester, and giant mechanical toads – all with a final twist in the tale.

Running throughout are Barfield’s lifelong themes of the power of words and meanings, of truth and the imagination, of love, redemption and transformation. The silver trumpet of the story calls us to our higher selves, reminding us of that singular truth in the darkest of times.

A century after its first appearance, Barfield’s charming – yet quietly subversive – allegory will continue to win generations of new readers.

ISBN: 978-0956942388

Edition History

  • 1st edition by Faber & Gwyer in 1925 (the year T. S. Eliot joined the firm) – with 29 illustrations by Gilbert James
  • 2nd edition by Eerdmans in 1968 – with 105 illustrations by Betty Beeby
  • 3rd edition by Bookmakers Guild in 1986 – with 20 illustrations by Josephine Spence
  • 4th edition by the Barfield Press in 2025– with 32 illustrations by Fredy Jaramillo Serna

Barfield’s fairy tale The Silver Trumpet shows how human truths can be communicated in children’s literature, providing proof of concept for Barfield’s fellow Inkling writers C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Lewis’ diary entry for 20 October 1923 records how he had been overjoyed to read the fairy tale in manuscript form saying “nothing in its kind can be imagined better.”

Tolkien also found that The Silver Trumpet had “scored a direct hit” with his children, as reported by Lewis in a letter to Barfield dated 28 June 1936.

The Silver Trumpet is the first published fantasy book by an Inkling. The illustrations for the book’s first two editions were commissioned by the publishers, and the drawings for the third edition are by Barfield’s friend Josephine Spence.

In an interview in 1984, Barfield explained that he wrote the story “to bring out the importance of the romantic element in relations between a man and a woman. . . . And more widely than that, the importance of the feeling element in life.”

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