Barrie, James Matthew (1860-1937) novelist, playwright

J. M. Barrie was born in Kirriemuir, Scotland, to David Barrie, who owned and ran a loom business, and Margaret Ogilvy Barrie. He grew up in the shadow of his older brother, David. When David died in a skating accident, six-year-old Barrie tried to earn his mother’s affection and ease her pain by dressing up as his deceased brother. As tragic as this death was for Barrie’s mother, it served as a kind of inspiration for Barrie. As he acted out the role of David, he realized that his brother would never grow up, that he would always be 13 years old to their mother. When Barrie himself turned 13, he realized that there would come a time when his childhood would be over. This idea frightened him, and as he grew up he discovered that he had a hard time relating to adults, preferring the company of children, whom he felt understood him better.

Barrie studied at Dumfries Academy at the University of Edinburgh, where he received his degree in 1882. The following year he became a journalist for the Nottingham Journal, and in 1885 he moved to London to work as a freelance writer. His first success came with a series of sketches based on his mother’s stories of her childhood in Kirriemuir, which Barrie renamed Thrums. Originally printed in the St. James’s Gazette, the sketches were published as Auld licht idylls in 1888.

Barrie found success as a novelist with such popular titles as A Window in Thrums, the further remembrances of his mother’s childhood experiences; and such plays as The Little Minister, which he adapted from his successful novel about a short minister who angers his neighbors when he falls in love with a gypsy. Both the novel and the play earned Barrie praise. His greatest success, however, came with the 1904 production of his play Peter Pan or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.

Peter Pan is a magical boy from Never-Never- Land, a place where boys and girls stay children forever. “I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn things,” Peter declares. “No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.” He befriends a girl named Wendy and takes her with him to Never-Never-Land to meet the Lost Boys, Peter’s band of friends, and to do battle with a team of pirates led by the evil Captain Hook.

The story of Peter Pan grew out of stories Barrie told to the Davies boys, sons of Arthur and Sylvia Llewellyn Davies, whom Barrie had befriended in 1897. He cared deeply for the boys and would spend as much time with them as possible, making up games and telling them stories, many of which were about Peter Pan, who was named after young Peter Davies.

Although Peter Pan began as a children’s character, and is certainly considered one today, Barrie did not initially intend his play to be only for children. As Cynthia Asquith writes in her biography of Barrie, “He didn’t want children to take Peter Pan seriously. His favorite reaction to his own play was that of the little boy who, favoured by a seat in the author’s box, and at the end injudiciously asked what he had liked best, promptly replied: ‘What I think I liked best was tearing up the programme and dropping the bits on people’s heads.’”

Barrie continued to write both plays and novels, including The Admirable Crichton (1902), a play about a butler who saves a shipwrecked family but in the process reverses the roles of servant and master; and his adult novel The Little White Bird (1902), the book in which Peter Pan is first introduced as a character in stories told to a little boy. Barrie rewrote his play as a children’s book in 1911.

Barrie was famous for his generosity. In his later years he donated all royalties from Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London. He answered his own fan mail and helped people with requests for jobs or advice. He received numerous honors before his death, including the Order of Merit (1922), the Rectorship of St. Andrews University, and the Chancellorship of Edinburgh University.

Barrie never lost touch with the boy within, and his work was consistently shaped by this childlike view. As critic Angel M. Pilkington wrote of Barrie, “He believed in the power of emotion, but he also was possessed of an irrepressible humor. He saw the pathos and beauty in humanity, but just as clearly he perceived the confusions and the cruelties. How else could he have made Peter Pan, Wendy, and Captain Hook?”

Critical Analysis. “Nothing that happens after we are 12 matters very much,” noted James Barrie, though the best- known representative of this idea is probably Peter Pan. First created for a novel for adults entitled The White Bird (1902), Barrie’s character of Peter Pan was brought to a younger audience in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906). A stage play, a novel, and countless adaptations have made the “boy who wouldn’t grow up” a myth that cannot be forgotten.

The inspiration for creating Peter Pan was drawn from Greek mythology: Pan is the god of shepherds and flocks, the natural wilderness, and the season of spring. The world is a playground for Pan as well as for Peter Pan. “I’m youth, I’m joy, I’m the little bird that has broken out of the egg,” sings Peter Pan when he defeats the villain Captain Hook. So much like Pan in his youthful energy, Peter Pan even dresses in the spirit of the Greek god: his suit of green leaves evokes images of springtime, and his pointed pixie hat and footwear have a playful, juvenile look.

Captain Hook represents adulthood, the very thing from which Peter Pan and the author Barrie ran away. The ongoing battles between Captain Hook and Peter Pan represent Barrie’s own struggle between the world of responsibility and maturity and the appeal of youth and playfulness. Living vicariously through his famous character, Barrie also made a considerable living from the popularity of Peter Pan. The income allowed Barrie to take care of young people, as Peter looks after the Lost Boys. In 1929 Barrie designated that the copyright to Peter Pan be left to England’s leading children’s care facility, Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Works about J. M. Barrie:
- Birkin, Andrew. J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys: The Love Story That Gave Birth to Peter Pan. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1979.
- Chaney, Lisa. Hide-and-Seek with Angels: A Life of J.
- M. Barrie. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006. Dunbar, Janet. J. M. Barrie: The Man Behind the Image. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970.
- Wullschlager, Jackie. Inventing Wonderland. New York: Free Press, 1995.