Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens J. M. Barrie – When Peter Pan and his fairy companion, Tinker Bell, fly in through the window of Wendy’s nursery one night, it is the beginning of an adventure that whisks Wendy and her brothers, Michael and John, off to Neverland. There, they will find mermaids, fairies, pirates led by the sinister Captain Hook, and the crocodile who bit off his leg – and still pursues him in hope of the rest!Peter Pan originally appeared as a baby living a magical life among birds and fairies in J. M. Barrie’s sequence of stories Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. His adventures capture the spirit of childhood – and of rebellion against the role of adulthood in conventional society. In his introduction, Jack Zipes sifts through the psychological interpretations that have engaged critics, explores the cultural and literary contexts in which we can appreciate Barrie’s enduring creation, and shows why Peter Pan is fundamentally a work that urges adults to reconnect with their own imaginations.
About the author
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan.The son of a weaver, Barrie studied at the University of Edinburgh. He took up journalism, worked for a Nottingham newspaper, and contributed to various London journals before moving to London in 1885. His early works, Auld Licht Idylls (1889) and A Window in Thrums (1889), contain fictional sketches of Scottish life and are commonly seen as representative of the Kailyard school. The publication of The Little Minister (1891) established his reputation as a novelist. During the next 10 years Barrie continued writing novels, but gradually his interest turned toward the theatre.In London he met the Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired him in writing about a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens (included in The Little White Bird), then to write Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, a ‘fairy play’ about this ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland. This play quickly overshadowed his previous work and although he continued to write successfully, it became his best-known work, credited with popularising the name Wendy, which was very uncommon previously.Barrie unofficially adopted the Davies boys following the deaths of their parents. Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital, which continues to benefit from them.
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