Peter Pan and Wendy - J.M. Barrie

Peter Pan and Wendy - J.M. Barrie

Hardcover: ISBN 0340246294
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton -, Original story first published 1911, This edition first published 1921, Reprint in this form 1978 and this edition is the seventh impression 1993.

Condition: Very Good +. This book is in very good condition. The beautiful blue boards with visually very appealing gold and green motives on the face and spine have some very slight/limited signs of wear and the book pages are clean, intact and the corners and spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far.

• Peter Pan; or, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, often known simply as Peter Pan, is a work by J. M. Barrie, in the form of a 1904 play and a 1911 novel titled Peter and Wendy, often extended as Peter Pan and Wendy. Both versions tell the story of Peter Pan, a mischievous little boy who can fly, and has many adventures on the island of Neverland that is inhabited by mermaids, fairies, Native Americans, and pirates. The Peter Pan stories also involve the characters Wendy Darling and her two brothers John and Michael, Peter's fairy Tinker Bell, the Lost Boys, and the pirate Captain Hook. The play and novel were inspired by Barrie's friendship with the Llewelyn Davies family.The play debuted at the Duke of York's Theatre in London on 27 December 1904 with Nina Boucicault, daughter of the playwright Dion Boucicault, in the title role. A Broadway production was mounted in 1905 starring Maude Adams. It was later revived with such actresses as Marilyn Miller and Eva Le Gallienne. Barrie continued to revise the play for years after its debut until publication of the play script in 1928, under the name Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up.Prior to the publication of Barrie's novel, the play was first adapted into the 1907 novelisation The Peter Pan Picture Book, written by Daniel O'Connor and illustrated by Alice B. Woodward. This was also the first illustrated version of the story. The novel was first published in 1911 by Hodder & Stoughton in the UK, and Charles Scribner's Sons in the US. The original book contains a frontispiece and 11 half-tone plates by the artist F. D. Bedford (whose illustrations are still under copyright in the EU). The novel was first abridged by May Byron in 1915, with Barrie's permission, and published under the title Peter Pan and Wendy, the first time this form was used. This version was later illustrated by Mabel Lucie Attwell in 1921.

• James Matthew Barrie was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland and then moved to London, where he wrote several successful novels and plays.

  The son of a weaver, Barrie studied at the University of Edinburgh. He took up journalism for a newspaper in Nottingham and contributed to various London journals before moving there in 1885. His early Auld Licht Idylls (1889) and A Window in Thrums (1889) contain fictional sketches of Scottish life representative of the Kailyard school. The publication of The Little Minister (1891) established his reputation as a novelist. During the next decade, Barrie continued to write novels, but gradually, his interest turned towards the theatre.

  In London, he met Llewelyn Davies, who inspired him about magical adventures of a baby boy in gardens of Kensington, included in The Little White Bird, then to a "fairy play" about this ageless adventures of an ordinary girl, named Wendy, in the setting of Neverland. People credited this best-known play with popularizing Wendy, the previously very unpopular name, and quickly overshadowed his previous, and he continued successfully.

  Following the deaths of their parents, Barrie unofficially adopted the boys. He gave the rights to great Ormond street hospital, which continues to benefit.