The Ballantine one-volume paperback edition has what appears to be a quotation from C. S. Lewis on the back cover: "I have been more curious about travels from Upmeads to Utterbol than about those recorded in Hokluyt. The magic in "The Well at the World's End" is that it is an image of the truth. If to love story is to love excitement, then I ought to be the greatest lover of excitement alive!" This passage is actually a pastiche of phrases from Lewis's essay "On Stories", and distorts Lewis's original meaning. He does not say that "the magic in the book" is an image of the truth, but that he is "not sure, on second thoughts, that the slow fading of the magic in "The Well at the World's End" is, after all, a blemish. It is an image of the truth".