Peter Pan (Barnes & Noble Signature Editions)

By J. M. Barrie, Lori M. Campbell and F. D. Bedford

Mrs. Darling dozes in the nursery as her children sleep. Suddenly, the window bursts open, and Peter Pan, the boy who refuses to grow up, flies in. Seeing a grown-up in the room, he gnashes his perfect set of pearly baby teeth at her. The children’s nurse Nana, a Newfoundland dog, gallops in and chases the boy out the window, slamming it shut with her paws. Peter escapes just in time, but his shadow is not so lucky. Now it is trapped in the nursery, and everyone knows he will come back for it. When he does, Wendy, John, and Michael will begin the greatest adventure any siblings have ever had.

     Peter whisks the children off to Neverland to meet the Lost Boys, Tinker Bell the fairy, and Princess Tiger Lily. Together, they wage fierce battles against the evil Captain Hook and his dreaded band of ruthless pirates, whose only goal in life, it seems, is to murder Peter and his friends.

     Amid the thrilling action and sweet fantasy of Peter Pan lie poignant touches of irony and tragedy. At the heart of Peter’s eternal youth and innocence is his inability to learn from experience. He is always surprised when someone lies to him; he sees Wendy’s flirtation only as motherly affection; and all of his friends must, of necessity, grow up and leave him behind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Nov 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781435141223

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.

Book preview

The Never Never Land

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Introduction, Annotations, and Further Reading

© 2012 by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

This 2012 edition published by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

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CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF J. M. BARRIE

INTRODUCTION

PETER PAN

ENDNOTES

BASED ON THE BOOK

FURTHER READING

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE NEVER NEVER LAND

PETER FLEW IN

THE BIRDS WERE FLOWN

LET HIM KEEP WHO CAN

PETER ON GUARD

SUMMER DAYS ON THE LAGOON

TO DIE WILL BE AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE?

WENDY’S STORY

FLUNG LIKE BALES

HOOK OR ME THIS TIME

THIS MAN IS MINE!

PETER AND JANE

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF J. M. BARRIE

INTRODUCTION

THE GOSSAMER CURTAIN BETWEEN REALITY AND IMAGINATION SLIPS back and behold: Neverland—enter at your own risk. For more than a century readers have thrilled to the escapades of Peter Pan and his lost boys as they battle Captain Hook and his pirates, rescue Tiger Lily the Indian princess, and avoid growing up at all costs. The adventure begins in Edwardian London when young Wendy Darling tells her mother that a boy has been visiting the nursery at night, sitting on the edge of her bed and playing his pipe. Mrs. Darling vaguely remembers Peter Pan from her own childhood, but Mr. Darling scoffs at the idea. The parents go to a dinner party, leaving Nana, the canine nursemaid, chained in the yard instead of inside where she might watch over the children. Mr. Darling receives his comeuppance when he and his wife return to find that Wendy and her brothers have been lured away to Neverland by Peter Pan. Whether Wendy will stay in Neverland becomes the central question of a story that was a quick success as a play in 1904 and as the novel Peter and Wendy in 1911 (later retitled Peter Pan). Since then, Peter Pan has remained an iconic image of youthfulness and imagination. These traits also extend to author J. M. Barrie, whose similarities to the boy who refuses to grow up continue to be of interest to understanding the story’s value and deeper meaning. As a classic of children’s literature, Peter Pan makes the inevitability of growing up all too real by dramatizing its inherent joys and sorrows, and for adults and children alike, the novel continues to occupy an almost mythical place in popular culture.

Born in 1860 in Kirriemuir in Angus, Scotland, James Matthew Barrie was the ninth child of weaver David Barrie and his wife Margaret Ogilvy. He showed an early inclination toward the theater, often organizing plays for his family and neighbors, performing in them with his siblings and friends. Jamie, as he was known to his family, enjoyed learning and spent much of his free time reading books by his favorite writers, including James Fenimore Cooper and Jules Verne. His rather carefree childhood was drastically interrupted in 1867 when his fourteen-year-old brother David died as a result of injuries sustained from a fall while ice-skating near the home of their eldest sibling, Alick. Maggie Barrie took the loss of her favorite son extremely hard, and Jamie sought to bring her around by wearing David’s clothes. He would also ape his brother’s mannerisms, such as his characteristic whistling, which in Peter Pan takes the form of Peter’s crowing that so annoys Captain Hook. It remains common to view David’s death as one of the most important influences in Barrie’s emotional development and in his creation of Peter Pan. Like Peter, David is frozen in perpetual boyhood, living on in the Neverland of his mother’s memory. His death and the idea of death itself inform every part of Barrie’s work: while Peter celebrates youth and joy, their antitheses are always present, embodied by Peter’s nemesis Captain Hook and by the ticking crocodile that follows the pirate as a reminder of the brevity of life (for those who agree to grow up). Further, the lost boys have a direct association with death as Peter euphemistically explains that they are children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way, and are sent to Neverland to defray expenses in the event they are not claimed in seven days.

Barrie’s efforts to ease his mother’s grieving resulted in an extremely close relationship, which translates into another of Peter Pan’s major themes: having or being a mother. Often this maternal preoccupation is negative, or at least ambivalent. For example, in a rare serious moment while they are in Neverland, Peter tells Wendy about his only memories of his mother, describing how after he had stayed away for moons and moons he returned to find the window was barred and another little boy sleeping in [his] bed. Beyond the surface, the line reads as a statement on Barrie’s feelings of guilt for being alive when his brother was dead and so woefully lamented by their mother. Peter’s ongoing quest for a mother, despite the narrator’s exclamation that the boy despised all mothers except Wendy, further illustrates this conflict. Indeed, the narrator shows just as much ambivalence about mothers as Peter does, often switching sides between the children and Mrs. Darling in the same way that Peter might suddenly change sides in the middle of a battle. In one scene, the narrator looks in on the real world where Mrs. Darling keeps vigil for her children’s return and echoes Peter’s feeling about mothers: I mean to say extraordinary nice things about her; but I despise her. Only a few pages later, the narrator determines, I find I won’t be able to say nasty things about her. . . . Some like Peter best and some like Wendy best, but I like her [Mrs. Darling] best. It would be a mistake to identify Barrie as the narrator, but the abundant connections between his life and Peter Pan support the assumption that he infuses the text with one of his most troublesome conflicts.

Another of these conflicts played out quite publicly with Barrie’s marriage and divorce in the 1890s. After earning an MA at Edinburgh University in 1882, Barrie worked as a journalist for a few years and then moved to London, where his success as a novelist and playwright enabled him to meet some of the leading actresses of the day. In 1892, he met Mary Ansell when his friend and fellow playwright Jerome K. Jerome suggested her as a second-lead actress for his new play, Walker London. Soon Barrie and Ansell were seen together all around the city. They married in 1894, even though Barrie’s writings at the time indicate decided resistance to the idea. For example, in his preparatory notes for the novel The Sentimentalist, Barrie sketches the title character as one who wants to make the girl love him, bullies and orders her . . . yet doesn’t want to marry.¹ He divorced Mary on grounds of her infidelity in 1909, but most scholars believe it was Barrie’s struggle with maturation, largely illustrated through his close relationship with the Llewelyn Davies family, that drove Mary into the arms of Gilbert Canaan, whom she married the year after the divorce was finalized.

Undoubtedly the most significant event of Barrie’s adult life, and the most influential in his creation of Peter Pan, occurred in 1896. While out for a walk in Kensington Gardens, Barrie befriended Peter Llewelyn Davies, the boy who would become the namesake for Peter Pan, along with his older brothers, George and Jack. Their meetings became quite regular as the boys, including younger siblings Michael and Nico, enjoyed playing games with Barrie and romping with his St. Bernard, Porthos, the model for the Darlings’ canine nanny in Peter Pan. While the boys’ parents, Arthur and Sylvia, attempted restraint, they found themselves relatively powerless in the face of [Barrie’s] determined friendship.² Unsurprisingly, Barrie’s relationship with Arthur was often strained, but he enjoyed a close yet entirely platonic relationship with Sylvia, and he became the children’s legal guardian after the parents succumbed to cancer in 1907 and 1910 respectively. The boys’ increased dependence upon him provided Barrie with a level of contentment by enabling him to indulge a latent maternal nature, one of the many facets of his complex personality. His games with the boys in Kensington Gardens inspired the adventures of Peter and his lost boys, which first appeared in print as a children’s story digression in Barrie’s adult novel The Little White Bird in 1902. Peter Pan first opened as a play at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London on December 27, 1904, starting a tradition of annual holiday performances in Great Britain and America that continues to this day.

Barrie’s relationship with the Llewelyn Davies boys and his self-identified personal difficulties with the process of growing up haunt Peter Pan with remarkable clarity. Barrie and his wife had no children, and many scholars have speculated about his sexuality,