by J. M. Barrie
Tarr, Carol Anita. “Shifting Images of Adulthood: From Barrie’s Peter Pan to Spielberg’s Hook.” In The Antic Art: Enhancing Children’s Literary Experiences through Film and Video. Ed. Lucy Rollin. Fort Atkinson, WI: Highsmith, 1993. Pp. 63–72.
Telfer, Kevin. The Remarkable Story of Great Ormond Street Hospital. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.
Toby, Marlene, and Carol Greene. James M. Barrie: Author of Peter Pan. Danbury, CT: Children’s Press, 1995.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York: New American Library, 1980.
Walbrook, H. M. J. M. Barrie and the Theatre. London: F. V. White, 1922.
Wellhousen, Karyn, and Zenong Yin. “ ‘Peter Pan Isn’t a Girls’ Part’: An Investigation of Gender Bias in a Kindergarten Classroom.” Women and Language 22 (1997): 35–39.
White, Donna R., and C. Anita Tarr, eds. J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan In and Out of Time: A Children’s Classic at 100. Lanham, MD: Children’s Literature Association and Scarecrow Press, 2006.
Williams, David Park. “Hook and Ahab: Barrie’s Strange Satire on Melville.” PMLA 80 (1965): 483–88.
Wilson, Ann. “Hauntings: Anxiety, Technology, and Gender in Peter Pan.” Modern Drama 43 (2000): 595–610.
Winter, Douglas E. Clive Barker: The Dark Fantastic. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
Wolf, Stacy. “ ‘Never Gonna Be a Man / Catch Me If You Can / I Won’t Grow Up’: A Lesbian Account of Mary Martin as Peter Pan.” Theatre Journal 49 (1997): 493–509.
Woollcott, Alexander. Shouts and Murmurs: Echoes of a Thousand and One First Nights. New York: The Century Co., 1922.
Wright, Allen. J. M. Barrie: Glamour of Twilight. Edinburgh: Ramsay Head Press, 1976.
Wullschläger, Jackie. Inventing Wonderland: The Lives and Fantasies of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J. M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and A. A. Milne. New York: Free Press, 1995.
Yeoman, Ann. Now or Neverland: Peter Pan and the Myth of Eternal Youth. A Psychological Perspective on a Cultural Icon. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1999.
Zipes, Jack. Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter. New York: Routledge, 2001.
———. Introduction. Peter Pan: Peter and Wendy and Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. New York: Penguin, 2004. Pp. vii–xxxii.
www.gosh.org/peterpan. Great Ormond Street Hospital website for Peter Pan, with a gallery of illustrations and other resources.
www.jmbarrie.co.uk. Website hosted by Andrew Birkin.
www.jmbarrie.net. Website hosted by J. M. Barrie Society.
www.kirriemuirheritage.org. Website of the Kirriemuir Heritage Trust, formed to protect and develop the heritage of J. M. Barrie’s birthplace and its surrounding district.
www.moatbrae.org. Website for Moat Brae House, a Georgian townhouse in Dumfries, Scotland, where J. M. Barrie played pirates while a pupil at Dumfries Academy.
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments often stop writers short. They are usually the last and can often be the most challenging piece in the process of producing a manuscript. Writing a book takes us away from the world. Books and papers occupy every available surface; our plants languish; the laundry piles up; faucets drip; dust settles; and coffee begins to feel like a best friend. J. M. Barrie once created a literary alter ego named Bookworm, and, in a series of notes jotted down for the play about him, he wrote: “B[ookworm] realizes he has been leading a selfish life engrossed in own work & not playing citizen’s part in world.” Those words hit home when I read them while writing this volume.
It may be true that books require solitude, but they are worldly both in their origins and their destinations. Mine have given me much to talk about, and without that talk those books would be shadowy, anemic versions of themselves. Since the time that Bob Weil of W. W. Norton called me to ask if I was interested in editing an Annotated Peter Pan, I have talked ceaselessly, perhaps interminably, about J. M. Barrie and Peter Pan. There was so much more to both their stories than I could ever have imagined, and everyone I knew had an autobiographical memory to share about Peter Pan—save Lani Guinier, who instead urged me to consider the history of flight in connection with Peter Pan. And then there were the scholars and experts on Barrie—from the earliest biographer, Denis Mackail, with his encyclopedic Story of J.M.B., to creative geniuses like Andrew Birkin, with his authoritative J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys and his BBC documentary The Lost Boys. Their voices, too, added to the chorus that I soon felt myself to be channeling as I tried to capture the magic of Peter Pan in his many incarnations.
Generosity is the term that comes to mind first when I look back on the many conversations that took place with family, friends, and colleagues over the past years. Tactfully steering me away from the arcane and esoteric while cheerfully drawing me back to the power of Barrie’s story, brothers, sisters, children, nieces, and nephews will find their influence, along with bits and pieces of our conversations, in this book. My students always put me back on the right track with their unfailingly sharp instincts about the plausible and the far-fetched. Their responses to Peter Pan reassured me that the story had retained a vibrant cultural energy and that there would always be something new to say about its many complicated layers of meaning.
Without Andrew Birkin’s monumental work on J. M. Barrie and his relationship to the Llewelyn Davies boys, I would have been lost in the archives and taken many more years to finish this book. Andrew’s willingness to share the labors of many years is nothing short of astonishing, and the dog-eared copy of J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys on my desk speaks volumes about my indebtedness to his groundbreaking work. I have especially valued the work of Jacqueline Rose, Jack Zipes, Lisa Chaney, and Jackie Wullschläger, who have provided new perspectives and insights on Peter Pan.
The staff at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University gave me access to papers and objects that brought my work alive in powerful ways. I feel grateful for their trust in allowing me to handle precious objects such as the only remaining copy of The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island and Barrie’s key to Kensington Gardens. The staff enabled me to work through the papers with maximum efficiency, and it gives me real pleasure to acknowledge their support as well as the love of books they displayed on a daily basis. Timothy Young, curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts, paved the way for my work, and I relied often on his expertise as I pored over the papers in the J. M. Barrie Manuscript Vault.
Christine De Poortere of Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity has been an extraordinary partner in this enterprise. Sharing her expertise and her passionate commitment to Barrie’s legacy, she has smoothed many rocky paths for me, and I send heartfelt thanks to her on the other side of the Atlantic. I am also grateful to her for writing the informative essay included in this volume about the hospital and its history.
Bob Weil has worked with me every step of the way, encouraging, prodding, inspiring, and reassuring. His modesty will prevent him from revealing the importance of his contributions, both editorial and intellectual. I do not exaggerate in saying that this book would not exist without his confidence in me and his willingness to push me out of my academic comfort zones. My thanks also go to Philip Marino at W. W. Norton, who understands the degree to which the devil is in the details and was always willing to participate in collective acts of exorcism.
At the very beginning of this project, Sarah Chalfant of the Wylie Agency and I shared our memories of Peter Pan and of reading the story when we were young. We marveled at illustrations by Attwell and Rackham, and it was at that point that I knew that Peter Pan was in my future.
Doris Sperber helped out in countless ways, tracking down books, catching errors, and printing out documents with lightning speed—with unfailing good cheer. My colleagues in the Folklore and Mythology Program at Harvard University—Deborah Foster, Holly Hutchison, and Steve Mitchell—provided a day-to-day working environment conducive to conversations and collabor
ations. Melissa Carden worked her magic with administrative matters and made sure that all the Peter Pan bills were paid. Many others will recognize their contributions to this volume, among them Owen Bates, Sarah Batista-Pereira, Kate Bernheimer, Lisa Brooks, Alexa Fishman, Ian Fleishman, Jenya Godina, Donald Haase, Heidi Hirschl, Elizabeth Hoffman, Adam Horn, Emily Hyman, Rick Jacoby, Emily Jones, Stephanie Klinkenberg, Sandy Kreisberg, Julia Lam, Kathy Lasky, Penny Laurans, Lois Lowry, Gregory Maguire, Hannah Milem, Madeline Miller, Garrett Morton, Christina Phillips, Isabella Roden, Lexi Ross, Ruth Sanderson, Alan Silva, Michael Sims, Ellen Handler Spitz, Corley Stone, Larry Wolff, and Jack Zipes.
And, Daniel and Lauren, as always, kept me from turning into Bookworm.
Alice B. Woodward, The Peter Pan Picture Book, 1907.
OTHER ANNOTATED BOOKS FROM W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
The Annotated Alice
by Lewis Carroll, edited with an introduction and notes by Martin Gardner
The Annotated Wizard of Oz
by L. Frank Baum, edited with an introduction and notes by Michael Patrick Hearn
The Annotated Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain, edited with an introduction and notes by Michael Patrick Hearn
The Annotated Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens, edited with an introduction and notes by Michael Patrick Hearn
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Volumes I, II, and III
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, edited with an introduction and notes by Leslie Klinger
The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales
edited with an introduction and notes by Maria Tatar
The Annotated Brothers Grimm
by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, with an introduction by A. S. Byatt, edited with a preface and notes by Maria Tatar
The Annotated Hunting of the Snark
by Lewis Carroll, with an introduction by Adam Gopnik, edited with notes by Martin Gardner
The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe, edited with an introduction and notes by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Hollis Robbins
The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen translated by Maria Tatar and Julie Allen, with an introduction and notes by Maria Tatar
The Annotated Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett, edited with an introduction and notes by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina
The New Annotated Dracula
by Bram Stoker, with an introduction by Neil Gaiman, edited with a preface and notes by Leslie S. Klinger
The Annotated Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame, edited with a preface and notes by Annie Gauger, with an introduction by Brian Jacques
ALSO BY MARIA TATAR
The Grimm Reader: The Classic Tales of the Brothers Grimm
Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood
Secrets beyond the Door: The Story of Bluebeard and His Wives
The Classic Fairy Tales
Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany
Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood
The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales
Spellbound: Studies on Mesmerism and Literature
About the Author
Born in 1860 in Kirriemuir, Scotland, J. M. Barrie was the third son of handloom weaver David Barrie and his wife, Margaret Ogilvy. His parents valued education, and their son studied literature at Edinburgh University before moving to London to launch a career as a journalist. In 1888, Barrie published Auld Licht Idylls, followed by A Window on Thrums and The Little Minister. These works, all based on village life in Kirriemuir, established him as a fiction writer with a flair for local color, an ear for finely calibrated dialogue, and a marvelous instinct for whimsy. The playwright in Barrie soon got the better of the novelist, and, after the success of a dramatic version of The Little Minister, there was no turning back. With additional theatrical triumphs to his credit—The Admirable Crichton, Dear Brutus, and Mary Rose—Barrie became one of the foremost playwrights of his day.
In 1894 Barrie married the actress Mary Ansell. The two never had children of their own, and they divorced fifteen years later, in 1909. But Barrie was always surrounded by children, even during his marriage, most notably when he took his St. Bernard, Porthos, for walks in Kensington Gardens. It was there that he met the Llewelyn Davies boys, who inspired him to write about a baby boy and his adventures in Kensington Gardens. These were the boys also featured in The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island, a volume published in two copies that documented summer adventures on a “desert island” with a villain named Captain Swarthy (played by Barrie). Barrie transformed those real-life adventures into Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up, performed in 1904 in London—then continuously save for two years during World War II. He adopted the five Llewelyn Davies boys after the death of their father in 1907 and their mother in 1910. Before his death, in 1937, he donated the rights to all works featuring Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. On the day of Sir James Barrie’s death, the king of England sent a message to Peter Davies, the third of the Llewelyn Davies brothers: “His loss will be universally mourned, for his writing has brought joy and inspiration to young and old alike.”
About the Editor
Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Folklore & Mythology and Germanic Languages & Literatures at Harvard University, where she teaches courses in the fields of German studies, children’s literature, and folklore. Her fascination with the story of Peter Pan reaches back to childhood. It was reawakened when she taught a course on children’s literature in Harvard’s General Education Program and explored, with her students, the complex, multilayered story behind the story of Peter Pan. With each passing year, the experience of reading Peter and Wendy was enriched by trying to understand the many different dimensions of this famed childhood entertainment.
Maria Tatar is the author of The Annotated Brothers Grimm, Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood, Classic Fairy Tales, and Secrets beyond the Door: The Story of Bluebeard and His Seven Wives, among other volumes. She served as dean for the humanities at Harvard and is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Frontispiece: Sir William Nicholson, James Barrie, 1904. Oil on canvas. (Courtesy of the Bridgeman Art Library. Reproduced by permission of Desmond Banks)
Copyright © 2011 by Maria Tatar
Peter Pan copyright © 1937 Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London.
“J. M. Barrie’s Legacy: Peter Pan and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children” by Christine De Poortere
copyright © 2011 Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity
All rights reserved
First Edition
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew), 1860–1937.
[Peter Pan]
The annotated Peter Pan : the centennial edition / J.M. Barrie ; edited with an introduction and notes by Maria Tatar. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-393-06600-5 (hardcover)
1. Peter Pan (Fictitious character)—Literary collections.
2. Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew), 1860–1937. Peter Pan.
I. Tatar, Maria, 1945– II. Title.
PR4074.P3 2011
823'.912—dc23
2011026204
ISBN 978-0-393-24881-4
(e-book)
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