J. M. Barrie

Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, known as J. M. Barrie (Kirriemuir, 1860 - London, 1937), was a Scottish novelist and playwright. He is remembered above all for Peter Pan, a character who escaped the theatre and entered the imagination of children around the world. In his lifetime he was a successful author in several forms, but his name became attached almost entirely to that creation.

He was born into a working-class Scottish family, the ninth of ten children. His father was a handloom weaver, and his mother, Margaret Ogilvy, worked to give her children a good education. The death of his older brother David, who was killed in an ice-skating accident shortly before his fourteenth birthday, left a deep mark on the family. Years later Barrie described, in a novelised account of his mother's life, how as a boy he tried to comfort her by copying his brother and sharing stories with her. He studied in Dumfries and at the University of Edinburgh, where he wrote for local newspapers, and graduated in 1882.

His first work was journalism. He worked for the Nottingham Journal and then in London, writing articles and fiction at the same time. His novels set in the fictional town of Thrums, based on Kirriemuir, brought him early success. The most popular was The Little Minister (1891), which was later adapted for the stage and the cinema. He then wrote two novels about Tommy, a boy who clings to childish fantasy and whose story ends unhappily. By about 1892 he had largely given up journalism to concentrate on the theatre.

His greatest recognition came on stage. His early parody of Ibsen dates from 1891. In 1901 and 1902 he had two hits: Quality Street, a comedy about a middle-aged spinster who pretends to be her own niece, and The Admirable Crichton, a social comedy in which an aristocratic family and their servants reverse their roles after a shipwreck. His most enduring work was Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, first staged in London in 1904. The character had first appeared in The Little White Bird (1902), a novel for adults, and the play helped popularise the name Wendy.

His closest personal bond was with the Llewelyn Davies boys, whom he met in Kensington Gardens in the late 1890s. After Arthur Llewelyn Davies died in 1907 he supported the family financially, and when Sylvia died in 1910 he became the boys' guardian, although he never formally adopted them. He suffered the loss of George, killed in the First World War, and of Michael, who drowned in 1921. Some have suspected his conduct towards the boys, but most of his biographers reject the accusation for lack of evidence.

His legacy is also institutional. In 1913 George V made him a baronet, and in 1922 he was admitted to the Order of Merit. Before his death in 1937 he gave the rights to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, which still benefits from them. His works survive in stage, film, musical and comic adaptations, and the boy who refuses to grow up is part of everyday language. Today he is read both as children's entertainment and as a commentary on the rigid social norms of his time.