James Matthew Barrie

Peter Pan (Illustrated) James Matthew Barrie

Peter Pan first appeared as a character in Barrie's The Little White Bird (1902), an adult novel. In chapters 13-18, titled "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens", Peter is a seven-day-old baby and has flown from his nursery to Kensington Gardens in London, where the fairies and birds taught him to fly. He is described as "betwixt-and-between" a boy and a bird. Following the success of the 1904 play, Barrie's publishers, Hodder and Stoughton, extracted these chapters of The Little White Bird and published them in 1906 under the title Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with the addition of illustrations by Arthur Rackham. Barrie returned to the character of Peter Pan as the centre of his stage play entitled Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, which premiered on 27 December 1904 at the Duke of York's Theatre in London. Barrie later adapted and expanded the play's storyline as a novel, published in 1911 as Peter and Wendy. J. M. Barrie may have based the character of Peter Pan on his older brother, David, who died in an ice-skating accident the day before his 14th birthday. His mother and brother thought of him as forever a boy.