Margaret Ogilvy (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By J. M. Barrie

J. M. Barrie, author of the play Peter Pan, wrote this unusual memoir about his mother, Margaret Ogilvy, after her death. Barrie’s mother brought him up in a richly imaginative atmosphere, and they read many books together. This volume is a tribute to all the years he spent with the delightful, tender-hearted Margaret Ogilvy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Feb 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411437777

J. M. Barrie

J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie (1860--1937) was a novelist and playwright born and educated in Scotland. After moving to London, he authored several successful novels and plays. While there, Barrie befriended the Llewelyn Davies family and its five boys, and it was this friendship that inspired him to write about a boy with magical abilities, first in his adult novel The Little White Bird and then later in Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, a 1904 play. Now an iconic character of children's literature, Peter Pan first appeared in book form in the 1911 novel Peter and Wendy, about the whimsical adventures of the eternal boy who could fly and his ordinary friend Wendy Darling.

Reviews for Margaret Ogilvy (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

[starbox_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A vivid portrait of the author's mother,, 26 June 2015This review is from: Margaret Ogilvy (Kindle Edition)A beautiful little book - one wants to pigeonhole it as 'biography' (of his mother), but it's much more a work of literature than that.Barrie looks back on his life in Scotland, with his numerous siblings - though all but two remain nameless - and his parents. His father is barely mentioned, for it is his mother who seems to have been the centre of the author's life.In early chapters we see the heartbreak she went through on the death of Barrie's elder brother, while away at school:"I heard a listless voice that had never been listless before say 'Is that you?' I think the tone hurt me, for I made no answer, and then the voice said more anxiously 'Is that you?' again. I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to, and I said in a little lonely voice, 'No, it's no' him, it's just me.' Then I heard a cry, and my mother turned in bed, and though it was dark I knew that she was holding out her arms."But Mother is not just a tragic or saintly character, for Barrie brings out in full her humorous character, whether devouring works by his rival, RL Stevenson (covertly - "you must remember that she only read it to persuade herself (and me) of its unworthiness, and that the reason she wanted to read the others was to get further proof.") or in her refusal to stay in bed when ill.Both beautiful and gently amusing, I found this a book that grew on me.