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***
James M. Barrie***
The Author of Peter Pan
Scottish journalist, playwright, and children's book
writer. Barrie became world famous with his play and story
about PETER PAN (1904), the boy who lived in Never Land,
had a war with Captain Hook, and would not grow up. The
first name of Peter Pan was almost certainly taken from
Peter Llewellyn Davies (1897-1960), one of the several
Davies brothers that Barrie knew. "When the first baby
laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a
thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that
was the beginning of fairies."
(from Peter Pan)
J.M. Barrie was born in
the Lowland village of Kirriemuir, in Forfashire. His
father, David Barrie was a handloom weaver, and mother,
Margaret Ogilvy, the daughter of a stonemason. They had
ten children, Barrie was the ninth. His brother David died
in a skating accident. David was the mother's favorite
child, and Barrie tried to gain her affection by dressing
up in the dead boy's clothes. The obsessive relationship
that grew between mother and son was to mark the whole of
his life. Barrie published an adoring biography of her in
1896. Barrie studied at Dumfries Academy at the University
of Edinburgh, receiving his M.A. in 1882. He worked as a
journalist for the Nottingham Journal and moved to London
as a freelance writer in 1885. In 1888 Barie gained his
first fame with AULD LICHT IDYLLS, sketches of Scottish
life. His melodramatic novel ,THE LITTLE MINISTER (1891),
became a huge success. After its dramatization Barrie
wrote mostly for the theater. In 1984 he married Mary
Ansell, who had appeared in his play WALKER, LONDON.
According to Janet Dunbar's biography (1970), Barrie was
impotent. He knew such great figures of literature as G.B.
Shaw and H.G. Wells and could surprise them with his
remarks.Once he said to Wells: "It is all very well to be
able to write books, but can you waggle your ears?" When a
friend noticed that he ordered Brussels sprouts every day,
he explained: "I cannot resists ordering them. The words
are so lovely to say." "It's sort of bloom on a woman. If
you have it, you don't need to have anything else, and if
you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you
have. Some woman, the few, have charm for all; and most
have charm for one. But some have charm for none."
(from What Every Woman Knows, 1908)
The Little Minister was a
popular stage production in 1897 both in England and in
the Unites States, where Barrie began his collaboration
with the impresario Charles Frohman and his star Maude
Adams. Two of Barrie's best plays, QUALITY STREET and THE
ADMIRABLE CRICHTON, were produced in London in 1902. In
the same year Peter Pan appeared by name in Barrie's adult
novel THE LITTLE WHITE BIRD. It was a first-person
narrative about a wealthy bachelor clubman's attachment to
a little boy, David. Taking this boy for walks in
Kensington Gardens, the narrator tells him of Peter Pan,
who can be found in the Gardens at night. Peter Pan was
produced for the stage in 1904 but the play had to wait
several years for a definitive printed version and it did
not appear as as a narrative story until 1911. The book
was titled PETER AND WENDY. In the novel's epilogue Peter
visits a grown-up Wendy. "Every time a child says 'I don't
believe in fairies' there is a little fairy somewhere that
falls down dead."
(from Peter Pan)
Peter Pan evolved
gradually from the stories that Barrie told to Sylvia
Llewelyn Davies's five young sons. She was the daughter of
the novelist George du Maurier, and a motherly figure,
with whom Barrie formed a long friendship. In 1909 Mary
Barrie began an affair with the writer Gilbert Cannan and
Barrie's marriage ended. When Sylvia Llwelyn Davies and
her husband died, Barrie was the unofficial guardian of
their sons.Barrie wrote two more fantasy plays. DEAR
BRUTUS (1917), described a group of people who enter a
magic wood where they are transformed into the people they
might have become had they made different choices. MARY
ROSE (1920) was a story of a mother, who is searching for
her lost child. Eventually she becomes a ghost. In 1913
Barrie became a baronet and in 1922 he received the Order
of Merit. He was elected lord rector of St. Andrew's
University and in 1930 chancellor of Edinburgh University.
Barrie died on June 3, 1937.
*For a great look
into the life of Barrie around the time he wrote Peter
Pan, I would suggest seeing the movie Finding Neverland,
it was a great film. |
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