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Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937), more commonly known as J. M. Barrie, was a Scottish novelist and dramatist. He is best remembered for creating Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, whom he based on his friends, the Llewelyn Davies boys. He is also credited with popularising the name "Wendy", which was uncommon (especially for girls) in both Britain and America before he gave it to the heroine of Peter Pan. He was made a baronet in 1913; his baronetcy was not inherited. He was made a member of the Order of Merit in 1922.

Contents 1 Childhood and adolescence 2 Literary career 3 Acquaintances 4 Llewelyn Davies family 5 Death 6 Biographical articles 7 Film biographies 8 Footnotes 9 References 10 External links 11 Other achievements

Barrie was born to a family of Scottish weavers in Kirriemuir, Angus, the ninth child of ten. When he was six, his brother David, his mother's favourite, died in a skating accident on the eve of his 14th birthday. His mother never recovered from the loss, and ignored the young Barrie. One time he entered her room, and heard her say "Is that you?" "I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to," wrote Barrie in his biographical account of his mother, Margaret Ogilvy (1896), "and I said in a little lonely voice, 'No, it's no' him, it's just me.'" Barrie's mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her. This had a profound impact on Barrie: he never grew much beyond five foot, and some authors have speculated that Peter Pan was inspired by the traumatic events of his own childhood. At the age of 13, Barrie was sent away to boarding school at Dumfries Academy. Here he and his friends spent time in the garden of Moat Brae house, playing pirates "in a sort of Odyssey that was long afterwards to become the play of Peter Pan".

Barrie was educated at the Glasgow Academy, Forfar Academy and Dumfries Academy, and the University of Edinburgh.

Barrie became a journalist in Nottingham, then London, and turned to writing novels and subsequently plays. He set his first novels in his birthplace of Kirriemuir, which he referred to as "Thrums". Barrie often wrote dialogue in Scots. Barrie's most successful early works were his Thrums stories, Auld Licht Idylls (1888), A Window in Thrums (1889),^[1] and The Little Minister (1891). Literary criticism of these works has been unfavourable, tending to disparage these early writings as sentimental and nostalgic depictions of a parochial Scotland far from the realities of the industrialised nineteenth century, but they were popular enough to establish Barrie as a popular writer in the UK even before Peter Pan made him a household name. His two "Tommy" novels, Sentimental Tommy (1896) and Tommy and Grizel (1902), dealt with themes much more explicitly related to those that would appear in Peter Pan. The first appearance of Peter came in The Little White Bird (1901).

Barrie also wrote a number of works for the theatre, beginning with Ibsen's Ghost (1891), a parody of Henrik Ibsen's drama Ghosts, which had just been performed for the first time in England under the Independent Theatre Society, led by J. T. Grein. Barrie's play was first performed on May 31 at Toole's Theatre in London. Barrie seemed to appreciate Ibsen's merits; even William Archer, the translator of Ibsen's works into English, enjoyed the humour of the play and recommended it to others. Barrie also authored the flop, Jane Annie (1893), which he begged his friend Arthur Conan Doyle to revise and finish, when he suffered the first of his many nervous breakdowns. Notable successes included Quality Street (1901) and The Admirable Crichton (1902).

Barrie's most famous and enduring work, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, had its first stage performance on 27 December 1904. It has been performed innumerable times since then, developed by Barrie into the 1911 nove Peter and Wendy, and adapted by others into feature films, musicals, and more. The story is the classic tale of the child that does not want to grow up. The Bloomsbury scenes show the societal constraints of late Victorian middle-class domestic reality. Neverland is free of these constraints, a world where sexuality and morality are ambivalent. George Bernard Shaw's description of the play as "ostensibly a holiday entertainment for children but really a play for grown-up people", suggests deeper social allegories at work in Peter Pan. In 1929 he specified that the copyright of the Peter Pan works should go to the nation's leading children's hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The current status of the copyright is complex.

Barrie also had a long string of successes on the stage after Peter Pan. Many of these works discuss social concerns. "The Twelve Pound Look" shows a wife divorcing a peer and gaining an independent income. Other plays, such as "Mary Rose" and a subplot in "Dear Brutus" revisit the image of the ageless child. Later plays included What Every Woman Knows (1908). His final play was The Boy David (1936), which dramatized the Biblical story of King Saul and the young David. Like the role of Peter Pan, that of David was played by a woman, Elisabeth Bergner.

Barrie, along with a number of other playwrights, was involved in the 1909 and 1911 attempts to challenge the censorship of the theatre by the Lord Chamberlain.

Barrie traveled in high literary circles, and had many famous friends. With Arthur Conan Doyle he wrote a failed musical. With Robert Louis Stevenson he conducted a long correspondence, but the two never met in person. George Bernard Shaw was for several years his neighbor, and once participated in a Western that Barrie scripted and filmed. Jerome K. Jerome introduced Barrie to his wife; H. G. Wells was a friend of many years. Barrie met Thomas Hardy through Hugh Clifford while he was staying in London. Conan Doyle, Jerome, Wells and other luminaries such as G. K. Chesterton and A. A. Milne also occasionally played cricket with a team founded by Barrie for his friends, the "Allahakbarries". (The name was chosen under the mistaken belief that "Allah akbar" means "God save us" in Arabic; in fact it means "God is great".)

Barrie also befriended Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott and was one of the seven recipients of letters that Scott wrote in the final hours of his life. He was godfather to Robert's son, Peter.^[2] Another close friend of Barrie's, theater producer Charles Frohman, who was responsible for the debut of Peter Pan' in both England and the U.S., died famously, declining a lifeboat seat when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat in the North Atlantic. In doing so, Frohman reportedly paraphrased Peter Pan's final line from the stage play, "To die will be an awfully big adventure."

On several occasions he met and told stories to the little girls who would become Queen Elizabeth II and her younger sister Princess Margaret.

The Arthur Llewelyn Davies family played an important part in Barrie's literary and personal life. It consisted of the parents Arthur (1863–1907) and Sylvia, née du Maurier (1866–1910) (daughter of George du Maurier), [married the 3Q of 1892 in Hampstead, London: GROMI: vol. 1a, p. 1331]; and their five sons George (1893–1915), John (1894-1959), Peter (1897–1960), Michael (1900–1921), and Nicholas (1903–1980).

Barrie became acquainted with the family in 1897 or 1898 after meeting George and Jack with their nurse (i.e. nanny) Mary Hodgson in London's Kensington Gardens. He lived nearby and often walked his St. Bernard Porthos in the park, and entertained the boys regularly. He did not meet Sylvia until a chance encounter at a dinner party brought them into social contact. He became a regular visitor at the Davies household and a common companion to the woman and her boys, despite the fact that he and she were each married. Barrie's marriage to the actress Mary Ansell was reportedly a sexless one, and childless. She had an affair with Gilbert Canaan (an associate of Barrie's in his anti-censorship activities) and when she refused to end it, Barrie granted her a divorce, highly unusual and stigmatised in those times.

When Arthur Llewelyn Davies died, "Uncle Jim" became even more involved in the boys' lives, and provided financial support to the family. (His income from Peter Pan and other works was easily adequate to provide for their living expenses and education.) Following Sylvia's death a few years later, Barrie claimed that they had been engaged to be married. Her will indicated nothing to that effect, but specified her wish to have Barrie be trustee and guardian to the boys, along with her mother Emma, her brother Guy Du Maurier, and Arthur's brother Compton. When copying the will informally for Sylvia's family, Barrie inserted himself in an additional paragraph: Sylvia had written that she would like Mary Hodgson, the boys' nurse, to continue taking care of them, and that perhaps "Jenny" (Mary's sister) could come help; Barrie wrote "Jimmy" (Sylvia's nickname for him) instead of "Jenny". Although Barrie and Hodgson did not get along well, they served as surrogate parents until the boys were all in school and Jack was married. (Birkin, p. 194)

Barrie had friendships with children both before the Davies boys and after they were grown, and there have often been suspicions that Barrie was a pedophile or engaged in child sexual abuse. However, there is no evidence that Barrie did – or was accused at the time of doing – anything of that sort, and Nico, the youngest of the brothers, flatly denied that Barrie ever behaved inappropriately. (Birkin, p. 130) "I don't believe that Uncle Jim ever experienced what one might call 'a stirring in the undergrowth' for anyone — man, woman, or child," he stated. "He was an innocent — which is why he could write Peter Pan." [1] His relationships with the Davies boys continued well beyond their childhood and adolescence.

The statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, erected in secret overnight for May Morning in 1912, was supposed to be modeled upon photographs of Michael dressed as Peter Pan. However, the sculptor decided to use a different child as a model, leaving Barrie very disappointed with the result. "It doesn't show the devil in Peter", he said. (Birkin, p. 202)

Barrie suffered bereavements with the boys, losing the two to whom he was closest. George was killed in action (1915) in World War I. Michael, with whom Barrie corresponded daily, drowned (1921) at a known danger-spot at Oxford, one month short of his 21st birthday. It was speculated that the drowning was a possible suicide pact with his friend and possible lover Rupert Buxton. Some years after Barrie's death, Peter wrote his Morgue, which contains much family information and comments on Barrie.

Barrie lies buried at Kirriemuir next to his parents and one sister and brother.

• The Story of J.M.B. by Sewell Stokes, Theatre Arts, Vol.XXV No.11, New York: Theatre Arts Inc, Nov 1941, pp 845-848.

The BBC made an award-winning miniseries by Andrew Birkin, The Lost Boys (also titled J.M. Barrie and the Lost Boys), in 1978, starring Ian Holm as Barrie and Ann Bell as Sylvia. It is considered factual, includes Arthur Llewelyn Davies (Tim Piggot-Smith), and confronts the issue of Barrie's affection for the Davies boys. The DVD is available in both the UK and USA. Birkin also published a book covering the material portrayed in the docudrama.

A semi-fictional movie about his relationship with the family, Finding Neverland, was released in November 2004, starring Johnny Depp as Barrie and Kate Winslet as Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. Among other liberties it takes with the facts, it omits Arthur and Nico.

1. ^ J. M. Barrie. A Window in Thrums. Project Gutenberg.
2. ^ Chaney, Lisa. Hide-and-Seek with Angels - A Life of J. M. Barrie, London: Arrow Books, 2005

• Birkin, Andrew: J. M. Barrie & the Lost Boys (Contables, 1979; revised edition, Yale University Press, 2003)

• Works by J. M. Barrie at Project Gutenberg
• eLook Literature: Works by J. M. Barrie - Writings by J. M. Barrie formatted in HTML and broken down by chapters.
• Barrie's official website, edited by Andrew Birkin on behalf of the Great Ormond Street Hospital, which includes a free database containing several thousand original scans of photographs, letters and documents.
• French website
• Info on It Might Have Been Raining The remarkable story of J. M. Barrie's housekeeper at Black Lake Cottage, written by Robert Greenham.
• J. M. Barrie and the Russian Dancers - Article by Robert Greenham about Barrie's play 'The Truth about the Russian Dancers' and his friendships with the prima ballerinas, Lydia Lopokova and Tamara Karsavina.
• J. M. Barrie and George Meredith Article by Robert Greenham about Barrie's friendship with the poet and novelist George Meredith.
• Another biography
• Another James Matthew Barrie biography
• Was the author of Peter Pan a pedophile? (from The Straight Dope)
• "Why J.M. Barrie Created Peter Pan" New Yorker (magazine) November 22, 2004 issue; Anthony Lane, author.
• J. M. Barrie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Learn about the friendship between Conan Doyle and James M. Barrie.
• Further information about the Copyright for Peter Pan and Great Ormond Street Hospital
• J.M. Barrie at the Internet Movie Database

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Preceded by Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig	Rector of the University of St Andrews 1919 - 1922	Succeeded by Rudyard Kipling
Preceded by Earl of Balfour	Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh 1930 – 1937	Succeeded by Baron Tweedsmuir

v • d • e British Children's and Young Adults' Literature (1900-1949)
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