Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of J(ames) M(atthew) Barrie, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 4000 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
I'm coming, but I maun give Mr. Dishart permission to pass first. Hae you heard, Mr. Dishart, Wearyworld whispered, "that the Egyptian diddled baith the captain and the shirra? It's my official opinion that she's no better than a roasted onion, the which, if you grip it firm, jumps out o' sicht, leaving its coat in your fingers. Mr. Dishart, you can pass." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Lousy Editing Job
I have read "The Little Minister" by J. M. Barrie in the past, and the story itself is wonderful.

However, I do have a complaint with the company (The Book Jungle) that published this edition.

Apparently this edition was not proof read, because there were countless errors.

1.Many spots where whole blocks of paragraphs were missing from a chapter, or interspersed in another chapter altogether.

2.Several spots where there were duplicated blocks of paragraphs in the same chapter.

3.Many inappropropriate spelling errors.

4.Punctuation errors, for example periods in inappropriate places, breaking up the sentence structure in the wrong spots.

Overall, I was very disappointed in this particular edition.I have to say it was the worst publication of a book that I have ever read.

And the sad thing was, it cost almost $20.00

Buyers beware!

A Little Diamond
While I couldn't find the World Syndicate 1933 hardback edition that I read of J.M. Barrie's tale first copyrighted in 1891, I did get caught up in the events of the story.The protagonist is a minor character in terms of involvement that recounts the events of the little minister Gavin Dishart.At age 21, Dishart has graduated from university and assumes his first church of the Auld Licht, moving to Thrums with his mother Martha.There with housekeeper Jean they move into the parsonage.The story is told through the eyes of the schoolmaster, who we learn is a biological relative unbeknownst to Gavin.The people of the district are primarily weavers.Their thick brogues are written into the dialogue with unusual words (ken, syne, dominie) that take a bit of time to get used to for the modern reader.For instance Rob Dow talks about the upcoming rain with this response: "Ay," said Tosh eagerly, "but will it be a saft, cowdie sweet ding-on?"You get the sense that they're considering whether it'll be a hard or soft rain, but the specifics zoom past the modern reader not used to the brogue.(I found it interesting that one townsman is named Peter Tosh whose name would be today better known to me as a reggae singer from Jamaica!)

A strike squelching by the military and police is outmaneuvered by the information spread by a gypsy referred to as "the Egyptian."After the opening salvo, the events of the story become less political and more personal as Gavin slowly falls in love with the Egyptian, Babbie, who hides a false identity.With complications made by Lord Rintoul who also wants to marry Babbie for her beauty, the story becomes a romance between money and love.Barrie throws in a bit of adventure with a major flood that rearranges the landscape before bringing the story to conclusion.I found the story to be charming with themes and characters that still speak to us today.This story is a little diamond, well worth dusting off by the modern reader.Enjoy!

great book
I recently picked up a copy of this book at the Lenox used book sale.My copy was inscribed by someone who gave it as a present in 1941.The book jacket says that it is a "children's book" but that's along the lines of saying that Gulliver's Travels is a children's book.The author is the same one who wrote Peter Pan.

It was written around the turn of the century and its style is a little bit more Victorian.However, it is a very interesting book, and I was fascinated by it.(Not quite fascinated enough to read it in one sitting, but fascinated enough that it was hard to tear myself away.)

The narrator is a man who was in love with a woman and circumstances separted them.Now, about 20 years later, she moves not far away from him with her son.The focus is on the circumstances involving the son, which is basically a simple love story.

Nothing original here, but some of the language is very poetic, and he tells a gripping story.Those who are interested in such things will enjoy the Scottish dialect and description of the lifestyle of a small Scottish weaving town. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
There were a few instances of weddings among the Auld Lichts that did not take place on Friday. Betsy Munn's brother thought to assert his two coal-carts, about which he was sinfully puffed up, by getting married early in the week; but he was a pragmatical feckless body, Jamie. The foreigner from York that Finny's grieve after disappointing Jinny Whamond took, sought to sow the seeds of strife by urging that Friday was an unlucky day; and I remember how the minister, who was always great in a crisis, nipped the bickering in the bud by adducing the conclusive fact that he had been married on the sixth day of the week himself. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
She who has been to so many theatres smiles at him. 'No, you boy! It's something in a play. It means that if we know ourselves well, we know our parents also. From thinking of myself, Cosmo, I know mother. In her youth she was one who did not love easily; but when she loved once it was for aye. A nature very difficult to understand, but profoundly interesting. I can feel her within me, as she was when she walked down the aisle on that strong arm, to honour and obey him henceforth for aye. What cared they that they had to leave their native land, they were together for aye. And so--' Her face is flushed. Cosmo interrupts selfishly. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
COMTESSE. Mrs. Shand, excuse me for saying that if half of what I hear be true, your husband is seeing that lady a great deal too often. (MAGGIE is expressionless; she reaches for her stocking, whereat her guest loses patience.) Oh, mon Dieu, put that down; you can buy them at two francs the pair. Mrs. Shand, why do not you compel yourself to take an intelligent interest in your husband's work? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Our Only Joke
J.M. Barrie's "What Every Woman Knows" premiered on Broadway in December 1908 at the Empire Theatre and ran for 198 performances with Maude Adams in the lead as Maggie Wylie.It was revived on Broadway in 1926 and ran from April to December for 268 performances with Helen Hayes in the lead role.It was briefly revived on Broadway a third time in November 1946 for 21 performances with Eli Wallach playing one of the ensemble and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as the butler.

With the play now 100 years old, it remains an interesting piece.Maggie Wylie is a plain country girl whose family despairs that she will never be able to find a husband because she's not good looking.A young student John Shand comes home from the university and tries to burglarize their house, not to steal anything but to sneak in and read the many books in their house.Shand left the university because of a lack of funds.Maggie's brothers James and David and her father Alick decide that they will front Shand the money to get his degree IF he will sign a contract that after graduation he will marry Maggie, providing that she wants to go through it.

Act II picks up six years later.John Shand has not only graduated, but he has just been elected to a seat in Parliament.Maggie offers to release him from his contract, but John announces to the election night audience that Maggie is the future Mrs. Shand.

Act III takes us yet a few more years into the future and John has become a successful politician known for wit that has even caused his sayings to be known as "shandisms."The Comtesse is an elegant upper-class woman who discovers the truth that Maggie, who modestly claims only to type her husband's speeches, is responsible for much of the witty language and humor that has made him famous.She even influences his platform such as supporting women's rights.However, a complication is thrown into the mix as John, who is fully convinced that he is responsible for his own success, decides that he is really in love with the Comtesse's niece Sybil.John gives Sybil a ruby pendant on his second wedding anniversary to Maggie and announces his love for Sybil.Maggie knowingly implores him to delay the announcement of their separation which will probably ruin his political career until after a major political speech he is set to deliver.She further asks the Comtesse, who has become an admirer of the quiet way that Maggie supports her husband and defers to him, to invite her niece Sybil and her husband John to the Comtesse's country home so that John can work on his speech.John is convinced that Sybil will inspire him.

Act IV picks up about three weeks later.The bloom is off the lily as far as John and Sybil's romance.Neither can stand the other.Furthermore, John has sent a draft of his speech to his political friend Venables who cancels Shand's invitation to speak because the speech lacks his usual spark.Maggie has meanwhile "typed" a new version of the speech and forwards it to Venables just as she arrives to announce her intention to return to the country with her brothers.Sybil breaks up with Shand, much to his relief.Venables loves the new speech.Shand discovers how much he is dependent on Maggie.Maggie says as the curtain falls, "Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that.It's our only joke.Every woman knows that."Finally, the couple laughs and reunites as the lights fade.

"What Every Woman Knows" is a bit dated.Maggie's willingness to defer to her husband may seem quaint to our era where romantic relationships are more partnerships.However, the action and story are still gripping.Some of the British political customs are a bit unfamiliar Stateside.However, this is an interesting play that could be revived successfully with a strong cast.Enjoy!
... Read more

Book Description
J. M. Barrie, novelist, playwright, and author of Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, led a life almost as magical and interesting as his famous creation. Childless in his marriage, Barrie grew close to the five young boys of the Llewelyn Davies family, ultimately becoming their guardian and devoted surrogate father when they were orphaned. Andrew Birkin draws extensively on a vast range of material by and about Barrie, including notebooks, memoirs, and hours of recorded interviews with the Llewelyn Davies family and their circle, to describe Barrie's life and the wonderful world he created for the boys. Originally published in 1979, this enchanting and richly illustrated account is reissued with a new preface to mark the release of Neverland, the film of Barrie's life, and the upcoming centenary of Peter Pan. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Lovely and sad, the story behind "Peter Pan and the Lost boys"
Having found this little book before the advent of the film "Finding Neverland" I was able to read it originally without comparing it to the film, always a good thing. The film, of course, changed much of the true story as films usually do.This book standing alone as far better,but note, it is not a happy story with a happy ending, it is a tragedy, and no one is left unscathed.
The photographs, almost all, were taken by Barrie himself, and are absolutely wonderful. He had a naturalartistic sense, and his unposed photos of the five Llewelyn Davies boys, Michael, George, Peter, Jack, and Nico at their play, stay with you. They are dressedin the Edwardian clothes of the time, or in costumes they wore in the elaborate make-believegames they played with their childlike grownup friend Mr Barrie, and those are truly memorable in themselves. Often they are playing with J.M. Barrie's large dog, and one can't help but think of the big dog,Nanna, in Peter Pan, it's acutally quite eerie, seeing that the play "Peter Pan" itself wouldn't be written yet for years.
J.M. Barrie came from a lower class Scottish family, and in childhood lost an older brother to illness. His mother took to her bed griefstricken, for a long period, and once, trying to cheer her, young Barrie put on the older brother's clothes and went to see his mother.For just a moment she thought it was the older brother, and he seemed to see happiness in her eyes; for all his life, the message stayed with him, the boy who would never grow up was the loved boy.
He was a strange, brilliant, gentle, childlike man. Highly regarded in his own time, considered a great playwright, equivilent to George Barnard Shaw inhis day;and very prosperous due to his books and plays, married, but childless, and probably not very happy in his marriage which would end in divorce,one day in Kensington Park he saw one of the five young Llewelyn Davies brothers.They struck up a friendship, based on Barrie being quite willing to talk to a child on the child's level. Soon after, he met the rest of the family, who were impressed to meet the famous playwright.Their family was also upper class, well to do, but would soon lose their father to cancer, they would thenceforth be in precarious financial straits.Barrie immediately became a combination father/ big brother to the boys.He also became close friends with their mother Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, but not, I suspect, to the degree the movie implies.It was all about the boys, their innocence, and somethinghe wished to capture and hold on to.His obsessive photography of them makes that clear.
Tragedy struck again, unbelievably, when their mother died of cancer as well, at a young age, after a relatively brief illness. By then Barrie was such a part of their lives that his continued influence, and the benefit of his money in seeing to it that all five boys finished school in the manner befitting their "class", was accepted by the boys' extended family.He stayed involved in all their lives indefinitely, though it is interesting that he had his favorites, and the two who were not favorites resented and disliked him as they grew older.
The book stops with the boys' growing up, though he did stay involved with them as a surrogate parent.Tragedy did hound the family, but unlike some reviewers I am not sure that it can be blamed on JM Barrie's role in their lives.In fact, without him, financially they would have far worse off.
It is true the boy named Peter resented that the play was named "Peter Pan", and of course he was teased at school, and Barrie probably should have thought of that.(Of course without Barrie he most likely wouldn't have been at Eton to be teased.)
Two footnotes:all the proceeds of the play went to the Children's Hospital in London for 100 years, until recently with the 100 years anniversary, the copyright ran out, and now it is in the public domain. No proceeds of his biggest success ever went to Barrie.
Also, the girl's name: "Wendy", was first used in the play.It was an unknown name before that. Barrie used it in memory of a young daughter of a friend who was named Wendy, and who died at age 5. (Not known where that family got the name from, or if it was a nickname.) It was not a name known previously and "Peter Pan" popularized it.
Its an excellent book, an opening via the photographs into another long-gone time, a sad story, but not I believe, due to Barrie. I believe he meant well, and tried his best to be a friend to that unfortunate family. He had his demons as do we all, but to "love" children, in that era, to befriend them, and even play with them when they were pre-teens, could still occur without any implication of perversity;and even to sleep with a child, the concern of one reviewer, was,at the end of the Victorian world,seen as a pure and innocent act, like a parent and child might sleep together...I think it is hard for us in our cynical age to see things as the late Victorians/Edwardians did.No whisper of scandal or of anything improper ever camefrom any of the five boys, their family, servants, or anyone else connected with them;and I think had there been it certainly would have come to light.I believe he truly loved the boys, and they in turn, after heknew them several years, and had observed their play and their natural talk and style, influenced him to write his masterpiece "Peter Pan".

J.M.Barries and the Lost Boys: the real story behind Peter Pan
This is one of the bases for the movie "Wonderland" but reading this book will creep you out on J.M.Barrie.You might never really like Peter Pan again.Author had access to his papers, letter, diaries etc.Very weird stuff.

Sheds a new light on Peter Pan
I found this book to be a well-researched and moving account of not only Barrie's life but also the lives and deaths of the original "Lost Boys".After reading this book, I read Peter Pan again in a whole new light and enjoyed it even more.I think reading this book is essential in order to fully appreciate the entire Peter Pan experience as it truly helps to bring the characters alive.

Tragic loss of dear illusions ...
I read this book over 15 years ago in an attempt to find out who the author of Peter Pan really was, and what his life was like. It was not a pleasant or easy read. I wanted to forget all about it and just have the enchantment of "Peter Pan," but as with the real life of the author and photographer of "Alice in Wonderland," the truth can wound deeply. But lies and half-truths can never reveal the relationship between biography and art, so one must often face much disturbing information in order to understand the art itself. This is not to say that art is reducible to biography; it is not. There is, nevertheless, a kind of dialectic (God, I do hate to sound so gawdawful jargony, but when it so plain, other words just do not work) between the life of a genius and the art of the same individual. The truth of art can only come from the struggle between an artist's vision and the life that made such a vision a necessity. Yes, a necessity: there are those artists whose lives were so fraught with sheer catastrophe that revelation through a skewed fantasy can be so powerful as to take on a "life" of its own. And this is why it is so grievous to "paint-over" the unpleasant details of such a life. There was a recent film with an appropriately disturbing title: in the attempt to not really "find" Neverland in Barrie's life, the art itself is drained of its truly tragic roots. At the time such "nice" little fantasies are presented, they seem so harmless, but they are not. Successful attempts to eradicate truth can also eradicate the depth of the art itself. "Neverland" is a word that begs a little attention: a land where children "never grow up." This is not to say that they physically die - no - instead they live their lives, as did Barrie, in a desolate, lifeless, and desperately lonely "land" and try, from within their internal isolation, to bring others along for the rides to nowhere and "never." Where else could such a person bring another? If one lives in "Neverland" of the mind, there is nowhere else to lead another - nowhere else to go. And if we do not face unpleasant truths as they are revealed in the crucible where life and art meet, we learn nothing further from the art. It is better, actually, to know nothing of an artist's life than to be fed untruths. I would suggest the readers either read this book and/or see Peter Pan, but would urge them *not* to see Peter Pan after experiencing a false represenation - no matter how "well-performed" the falsehood is presented. The play or story would be meaningless. The truths, whatever you choose to make of them are here in this book, like it or not. And once the genie is out of the bottle (such as when you have been fed a disingenuous Hollywood film or other disingenuous account), to refrain from the truths of an artist's life is a violation of the art. No one can any longer understand or be truly moved by Peter Pan, much less try to interpret it based upon a sugar-coated Hollywood paint-job. And the effect goes on: if other artists were inspired by Barrie's work (perhaps because it touched the nerves of their own catastrophic lives), and all we have is a candy-coated film, their art and whatever in their lives might have inpired their interest in Barrie's work is also distorted. I do not know if truth sets anyone "free," but I do know that untruths distort and harm. And then the distortion goes on . . . This book cuts deep, but struggles for truths, which is what a biography of an artistic genius should try very hard to do.

Tragic and Beautiful
Prompted by the movie "Finding Neverland" I wanted to learn more about the Davies family and their relationship with Barrie.My research lead me to this book.The tragic story of the boys and Barrie was an eye opening read.Birkin is an artful weaver of ancedotes, interviews and history.While I was reading the book I got lost.I started feeling like I was an intimate friend of the families, instead of curious observer. Furthermore, Birkin's website has been updated with more pictures and media files. The website coupled with the book really saturates you into the life of the 5 boys and the mindof the man who loved them very much. A beautiful account of a flawed and tragic life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The Power of Belief
Hide-and-Seek With Angels: A life of J.M. Barrie
By Lisa Chaney


J.M. Barrie was an extraordinary man who lived in extraordinary times.Although he is remembered largely for his classic story of childhood and belief, Peter Pan,¨ he was one of the leading literary lights at a time when giants like Robert Louis Stevenson, Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells dominated British literature.
Stevenson wrote from Samoa that Henry James, Kipling and Barrie were his "muses."
Barrie was enormously successful as a playwright, amassing a fortune which he bequeathed, characteristically, to a children's hospital.

But his life was marked by tragedy: the premature death of his sister, his friend George Meredith, and a failed and likely unconsummated marriage.In her excellent biography,
"Hide and Seek with Angels," Lisa Chaney examines Barrie's childhood with a domineering mother and a wimpy father (and we all know what that leads to); his education; first attempts at literature, and strange affection for children. Barrie was complex: sometimes charming, sometimes aloof and threatening; confusing and perplexing.
Not having read Andrew Birkin's "JM Barrie and The Lost Boys" (it's not in our library system), I can't compare the two books.But Barrie's obsessive relationship with the orphaned boys...which continued through their adolence... is touched on although not excessively.

"Herein lies the profound difference between Barrie and the other great writers for children. All of them --Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, Kenneth Grahame, Beatrix Potter, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Roald Dahl--no matter how subversive
or anarchic their worlds, wrote stories that include the idea of negotiating with and becoming adult. No matter how impious or irreverent, they all acknowledge time. But in Peter Pan it is unavoidably clear that at the deepest level Barrie¡¦s little hero refuses to grow up. He fears the very qualities of adulthood, and this is Barrie¡¦s dilemma.¡¨
(Hide and Seek with Angels,P. 237)

Hide and Seek With Angels¡ is a remarkably complete, well-researched, and well- presented biography of a difficult subject.

*****

a satisfying life of an underrated author
After I've gotten to know an author, I generally get the urge to find out whether his life matches up with my notions.Thus, the publication of Lisa Chaney's "A Life of James Barrie" was especially timely for me, since I've been systematically working through Barrie's novels and plays over the last couple of years.I wish it hadn't taken me so long to become aware of his body of work.

Barrie's importance stretches far beyond "Peter Pan," and Chaney gives due attention to other stages of his life and to his many other literary and dramatic successes.She falls occasionally into amateur psychoanalysis, but Barrie was so eccentric that I can hardly blame her.Her prose is straightforward and does not distract (although her book contains a surprising number of spelling errors, mostly the sort of thing that spellcheck programs don't pick up, like "it's" versus "its").Her biography of this literary craftsman is more than satisfying.

I was pleased to learn from Chaney about Barrie's friendships with Thomas Hardy and other luminaries like Arthur Conan Doyle, R. L. Stevenson, H. G. Wells, and George Meredith.However, Chaney makes little effort to relate Barrie's work to that of his contemporaries, other than to contrast "Peter Pan" with other prominent works of children's literature.There was surely more to be said; personally, I could not help linking Barrie's early "A Window in Thrums," a book of tender episodes in the lives of rustic Scots, to Hardy's "Under the Greenwood Tree," an episodic early novel containing affectionate portrayals of English rustics.And given their friendship, was it coincidence that Hardy abandoned novel-writing for poetry about the same time that Barrie abandoned novel-writing for drama?

By the time of his last novel, "The Little White Bird," Barrie had achieved a degree of control over language and tone that, in my view, would be surpassed only by E. M. Forster and P. G. Wodehouse.He had an ear for dialect to rival Hardy's.The half-dozen best of his ingenious and felicitous plays, gems like "The Admirable Crichton" and "What Every Woman Knows," not to mention "Peter Pan," will last as long as Shaw's.J. M. Barrie is an underrated writer, and this biography was well merited.

"The Puppet Master In Control"
Lisa Chaney's excellent, insightful Hide-And-Seek with Angels: A Life of J. M. Barrie (2005) offers readers a broader view of the Scottish writer's life than can be found in Andrew Birkin's classic J. M. Barrie & the Lost Boys: The Love Story That Gave Birth To Peter Pan (1979). Though Barrie's obsessive relationship with the Llewelyn Davies boys is not the primary focus of Chaney's biography, the physically unassuming Barrie is, over the course of the biography, nonetheless exposed as having been a domineering, shrewd, and deceitful arch-manipulator who cloaked his motives and emotional neediness in financial generosity and elaborate, ostensibly good manners.

Despite Barrie's many novelistic and theatrical achievements, and the fact that he was a self-made man of modest origin, the question of Barrie's divided, willful, and often poisonous character dominates his life story; though in time Barrie came to be seen as a noble being in the eyes of the masses ("the British public had long since taken him to their heart...he could meet anyone he choose, anything he did was news, and the honors continued to be awarded"), much of his personal behavior reflects differently on this estimation.

Though Chaney astutely examines the social and sexual mores of Victorian and Edwardian England, which she contrasts with those of the present day, and doesn't find Barrie's behavior towards the Llewelyn Davies boys intrinsically suspicious, Chaney's emphasis on overt sexual desire and genital contact perhaps misses the point. Though no hard evidence that Barrie was actively pedophiliac exists, it is possible that Barrie was pedophiliac by nature, even if he never acted upon his desires with the Llewelyn Davies boys or any others. Some unusual, perhaps abnormal, psychic factor certainly fueled his ambitions where the family was concerned.

Thought simply asexual by many--and with good reason, since his marriage to actress Mary Ansell was never consummated--Barrie smoothly insinuated himself into the daily lives of the Llewelyn Davies family, even though he knew his smothering presence was resented, to varying degrees and at different periods, by husband and father Arthur, and sons Jack and Peter.

The truth is that Barrie didn't care whether or not he was unwanted, initially or thereafter. Year after year, he slowly took control of the family wherever and whenever he saw an opportunity, until the boy's lives were almost completely under his management. Revealing the same kind of telling disrespect to mother Sylvia after her death that he showed to father Arthur in life, Barrie even went to far as to deceitfully alter a copy of Sylvia's will to give extended family members the impression that he was the party Sylvia had selected to become the children's guardian after her passing.

Though Barrie obviously bore no responsibility for the cancer that killed both Arthur and Sylvia early in their lives, nor for son George's death in World War One, Barrie may have played an indirect role in the death of favorite boy Michael, who, as a young man, drowned with a friend at Oxford in what may have been a homosexual suicide pact (brother Peter committed suicide at 63). The handsome, sensitive Michael loved Barrie, but had begun to resent Barrie's almost total control over his life. Since childhood, Michael had suffered from terrible nightmares (that were often assuaged by a vigilant Barrie), which may very well have been an unconscious response to "Uncle Jim's" slow, methodical, and passive-aggressive takeover of his family and usurpation of patriarch Arthur's role. If at any time Michael suffered from doubt, confusion, and fear about the nature of his sexuality, Barrie's particular brand of affection may only have exacerbated those feelings.

Chaney's own theory, that Barrie, "in that peculiar shelter between the conscious and the unconscious" desperately melded Michael with his memories of himself from his own emotionally troubled childhood, also reflects a grasping attachment that Michael may have intuitively sensed as parasitic. Unsurprisingly, later in their lives, both Jack and Peter expressed their view that Barrie's strange, far-reaching influence on their family was intrusive at best and unwholesome, perhaps even baleful, at worst.

As fate would have it, final happiness with the Llewelyn Davies family eluded Barrie, and the tragic events of all of their lives meant that Barrie lost early the three members that he loved most dearly--Sylvia, George, and Michael--while the relatively unfavored sons--Jack, Peter, and Nicholas--oddly enough--married, had children, and lived well into adulthood.

solid bio
By providing a deep look at J. M. Barrie, Lisa Chaney also presents a keen glimpse into the creating of Peter Pan in this fine insightful biography.Ms. Chaney provides the childhood background of the renowned author who was the ninth child of Scottish parents during the industrial revolution.He left for London to become a journalist and soon became friends with writers George Meredith and Thomas Hardy even as he began his career (yes he wrote other works besides Pan).In his late thirties Barrie befriends Arthur and Sylvia Davies; he especially enjoyed the times with their offspring as his only marriage ended in divorce and no children.That time spent with the Davies family led to his play Peter Pan in 1904 as he saw his friends as the loving Darlings.When they died he felt alone though his play made him rich and famous yet perhaps as Peter Barrie he never wanted to grow up.

Well written and entreating this is a solid bio but feels lacking as a historiographic perspective of critics analyzing the author and his works hinted at with references would have rounded out the insight.Still this is a fascinating look at one of the leaders of the golden age of English writers of children tales; in this case a man who seemingly preferred fantasy so as to never grow up.

Harriet Klausner
... Read more

Book Description
A biography of the author of "Peter Pan" and "The Admirable Crichton." ILLUS.

THIS TITLE IS CITED AND RECOMMENDED BY:Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. ... Read more

Book Description
A biography and critical study of the author of the Peter Pan cycle. ... Read more