Biography
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937), more commonly known as J. M. Barrie, was a Scottish novelist and dramatist. He is best remembered for creating Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, whom he based on his friends, the Llewelyn Davies boys. Born in Kirriemuir, Angus, the second youngest of ten children, Barrie was educated at the Glasgow Academy, Forfar Academy and Dumfries Academy, and the University of Edinburgh. He became a journalist in Nottingham, then London, and turned to writing novels and subsequently plays. He is also credited for the invention or popularisation of the name "Wendy", as only five records of girls named Wendy can be found before the 1910 United States Census. Made a baronet in 1913, Barrie lies buried at Kirriemuir next to his parents and one sister and brother. His baronetcy was not inherited.
Childhood
J.M. Barrie's family were Scottish weavers; he was the ninth child of ten. When he was six, his brother David, his mother's favourite, died in a skating accident on the eve of his 14th birthday. His mother never recovered from the loss, and ignored J.M. His father would not interact at all with the children. When young J.M. would enter a room and see his mother, she would always say "David, is that you? Could it be you?" and when she realised who it was, would say "Oh, it's only you." Barrie's mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her. This had a profound impact on J.M. Not only was he mentally scarred with the notion that growing up was wrong, J.M. himself stopped growing at five feet.[citation needed] It is thought he suffered from psychogenic dwarfism, and some critics have speculated that Peter Pan is based on J.M.'s childhood.[citation needed] Barrie spent time at the Moat Brae house in Dumfries playing with friends, where he gained the inspiration for Peter Pan.
Literary career
Barrie set his first novels in his birthplace of Kirriemuir, which he referred to as "Thrums". Barrie often wrote dialogue in Scots. His Thrums novels were hugely successful: Auld Licht Idylls (1888), A Window in Thrums (1889), and The Little Minister (1891). His two "Tommy" novels, Sentimental Tommy (1896) and Tommy and Grizel (1902), dealt with themes much more explicitly related to what would become Peter Pan. The first appearance of Pan came in The Little White Bird (1901).
Barrie also wrote a number of works for the theatre, beginning with Ibsen's Ghost (1891), a parody of Henrik Ibsen's drama Ghosts, which had just been performed for the first time in England under the Independent Theatre Society, led by J. T. Grein. Barrie's play was first performed on May 31 at Toole's Theatre in London. Barrie seemed to appreciate Ibsen's merits; even William Archer, the translator of Ibsen's works into English, enjoyed the humour of the play and recommended it to others. Barrie also authored the flop, Jane Annie (1893), which he begged his friend Arthur Conan Doyle to revise and finish, when he suffered the first of his many nervous breakdowns. Notable successes included Quality Street (1901) and The Admirable Crichton (1902).
Barrie's most famous and enduring work, Peter Pan, had its first stage performance on December 27, 1904. In 1924 he specified that the copyright of the play should go to the nation's leading children's hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. The current status of the copyright is complex. Later plays included What Every Woman Knows (1908). His final play was The Boy David (1936), which dramatized the Biblical story of King Saul and the young David. Like the role of Peter Pan, that of David was played by a woman — Elisabeth Bergner.Barrie, along with a number of other playwrights, was involved in the 1909 and 1911 attempts to challenge the censorship of the theatre by the Lord Chamberlain.