Barrie biography j m

British novelist and playwright (–)

Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (; 9 May &#;&#; 19 June ) was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered as the maker of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland and then moved to London, where he wrote several victorious novels and plays.

There he met the Llewelyn Davies boys, who inspired him to record about a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens (first included in Barrie's adult novel The Little Pale Bird), then to write Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, a West End "fairy play" about an ageless boy and an plain girl named Wendy who possess adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland.

Although he continued to write successfully, Peter Pan overshadowed his other work, and is credited with popularising the name Wendy.^[1] Barrie unofficially adopted the Davies boys following the deaths of their parents. Barrie was made a baronet by George V on 14 June ,^[2] and a member of the Order of Merit in the New Year Honours.^[3] Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Avenue Hospital for Children in London, which continues to benefit from them.

Childhood and adolescence

James Matthew Barrie was born in Kirriemuir, Angus, to a conservative Calvinist family. His father, David Barrie, was a modestly successful weaver. His mother, Margaret Ogilvy, assumed her deceased mother's household responsibilities at the age of eight.

Barrie was the ninth kid of ten (two of whom died before he was born), all of whom were schooled in at least the three Rs in preparation for achievable professional careers.^[4] He was a small child and drew attention to himself with storytelling.^[5] He grew to only 5&#;ft 31&#;2 in.

(&#;cm) according to his passport.^[6]

When James Barrie was six years old, his elder brother David (their mother's favourite) died in an ice-skating accident on the day before his 14th birthday.

This left his mother devastated, and Barrie tried to fill David's place in his mother's attentions, even wearing David's clothes and whistling in the manner that he did. One time, Barrie entered her room and heard her say, "Is that you?" "I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to", wrote Barrie in his biographical account of his mother Margaret Ogilvy () "and I said in a little lonely voice, 'No, it's no' him, it's just me.'" Barrie's mother found comfort in the fact that her lifeless son would remain a young man forever, never to grow up and leave her.

Eventually, Barrie and his mother entertained each other with stories of her brief childhood and books such as Robinson Crusoe, works by fellow Scotsman Walter Scott, and The Pilgrim's Progress.^[9]

At the age of eight, Barrie was sent to the Glasgow Academy in the care of his eldest siblings, Alexander and Mary Ann, who taught at the college.

When he was 10, he returned home and continued his education at the Forfar Academy. At 14, he left abode for Dumfries Academy, again under the watch of Alexander and Mary Ann. He became a voracious reader and was fond of penny dreadfuls and the works of Robert Michael Ballantyne and James Fenimore Cooper.

At Dumfries, he and his friends spent time in the garden of Moat Brae house, playing pirates "in a sort of Odyssey that was long afterwards to become the play of Peter Pan".^[10][11] They formed a drama club, producing his first play Bandelero the Bandit, which provoked a minor controversy accompanying a scathing moral denunciation from a clergyman on the school's governing board.^[9]

Literary career

Barrie knew that he wished to follow a career as an author.

However, his family attempted to persuade him to choose a profession such as the ministry. With advice from Alexander, he was able to work out a compromise: he would attend a university but would study literature. Barrie enrolled at the University of Edinburgh where he wrote drama reviews for the Edinburgh Evening Courant.

He graduated and obtained an M.A. on 21 April

Following a job advertisement found by his sister in The Scotsman, he worked for a year and a half as a staff journalist on the Nottingham Journal. Back in Kirriemuir, he submitted a piece to the St.

James's Gazette, a London newspaper, using his mother's stories about the town where she grew up (renamed "Thrums"). The editor "liked that Scotch thing" so well that Barrie ended up writing a series of these stories.^[9] They served as the basis for his first novels: Auld Licht Idylls (), A Window in Thrums (),^[13] and The Small Minister ().

The stories depicted the "Auld Lichts", a strict religious sect to which his grandfather had once belonged. Latest literary criticism of these preceding works has been unfavourable, tending to disparage them as lovey-dovey and nostalgic depictions of a parochial Scotland, far from the realities of the industrialised 19th century, seen as characteristic of what became known as the Kailyard School.^[15] Despite, or perhaps because of, this, they were popular enough at the hour to establish Barrie as a successful writer.

Following that accomplishment, he published Better Dead () privately and at his have expense, but it failed to sell. His two "Tommy" novels, Sentimental Tommy () and Tommy and Grizel (), were about a boy and young guy who clings to childish fantasy, with an unhappy ending.

The English novelist George Gissing interpret the former in November and wrote that he "thoroughly dislike[d it]".^[17]

Meanwhile, Barrie's attention turned increasingly to works for the theatre, beginning with a biography of Richard Savage, written by Barrie and H.

B. Marriott Watson; it was performed only once and critically panned. He immediately followed this with Ibsen's Ghost, or Toole Up-to-Date (), a parody of Henrik Ibsen's dramas Hedda Gabler and Ghosts.Ghosts had been unlicensed in the UK until ,^[18] but had created a sensation at the occasion from a single "club" show.

The production of Ibsen's Ghost at Toole's Theatre in London was seen by William Archer, the translator of Ibsen's works into English. Apparently comfortable with the parody, he enjoyed the humour of the play and recommended it to others.

Barrie's third play Walker, London () resulted in his being introduced to a young actress named Mary Ansell. He proposed to her and they were married on 9 July Barrie bought her a Saint Bernard puppy, Porthos, who played a part in the novel The Petty White Bird.

He used Ansell's first name for many characters in his novels. Barrie also authored Jane Annie, a comic opera for Richard D'Oyly Carte (), which failed; he persuaded Arthur Conan Doyle to edit and finish it for him.

In and , he had back-to-back successes; Quality Street was about a respectable, responsible aged maid who poses as her own flirtatious niece to attempt to win the attention of a former suitor returned from the war.

The Admirable Crichton was a critically acclaimed social commentary with elaborate staging, about an aristocratic family and their household servants whose social command is inverted after they are shipwrecked on a desert island.

Max Beerbohm thought it "quite the best thing that has happened, in my time, to the British theatre".^[19]

The character of "Peter Pan" first appeared in The Little White Bird. The novel was published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton in , and serialised in the US in the equal year in Scribner's Magazine.^[20] Barrie's more famous and enduring operate Peter Pan, or The Lad Who Wouldn't Grow Up had its first stage performance on 27 December at the West End’s Duke of York's Theatre.^[21] This play introduced audiences to the name Wendy; it was inspired by a young lady named Margaret Henley who called Barrie "Friendy", but could not pronounce her Rs very successfully.

The Bloomsbury scenes show the societal constraints of late Victorian and Edwardian middle class household reality, contrasted with Neverland, a world where morality is ambivalent. George Bernard Shaw described the play as "ostensibly a holiday entertainment for children but really a play for grown-up people", suggesting deeper social metaphors at work in Peter Pan.

In , it was parodied by H. G. Pélissier and The Follies at the Apollo Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue in a sketch entitled Baffles or the Peterpan-tomime. This parody was in fact reviewed by Barrie himself in a magazine called Sphere as being "funny in minute bits", although he also concluded that The Follies were "one of the funniest things now to be seen in London."^[22]

Barrie had a long string of successes on the stage after Peter Pan, many of which discuss social concerns, as Barrie continued to integrate his labor and his beliefs.

The Twelve Pound Look () concerns a wife leaving her 'typical' husband once she can gain an independent income. Other plays, such as Mary Rose () and Dear Brutus (), revisit the idea of the ageless youngster and parallel worlds.

Barrie was involved in the and shots to challenge the censorship of the theatre by the Lord Chamberlain, along with a number of other playwrights.^[23]

In , Barrie developed the Peter Pan participate into the novel Peter and Wendy.

In April , Barrie gave the of the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital, a leading children's hospital in London. The current status of the is somewhat complex. His final play was The Boy David (), which dramatised the Biblical story of King Saul and the new David.

Like the role of Peter Pan, that of David was played by a chick, Elisabeth Bergner, for whom Barrie wrote the play.^[24]

Social connections

Barrie moved in literary circles and had many famous friends in addition to his professional collaborators.

Novelist George Meredith was an prior social patron. He had a long correspondence with fellow Scot Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived in Samoa at the second. Stevenson invited Barrie to check in him, but the two never met.^[25][26] He was also friends with fellow Scots writer S.

R. Crockett. George Bernard Shaw was his neighbour in London for several years, and once participated in a Western that Barrie scripted and filmed. H. G. Wells was a confidant of many years, and tried to intervene when Barrie's marriage fell apart.

Barrie met Thomas Hardy through Hugh Clifford while he was staying in London.^[26] He was friends with Nobel prize winnerJohn Galsworthy.^[27]

Barrie remained tied to his Scottish roots and visited his hometown of Kirriemuir regularly with his wards.

When choosing his first personal secretary, Barrie chose E. V. Lucas's wife, Elizabeth Lucas, who had Scottish roots through her American parentage.^[28] After Elizabeth Lucas moved to Paris, France, Barrie chose Cynthia Asquith as his personal secretary.

After the First Earth War, Barrie sometimes stayed at Stanway House near the village of Stanway in Gloucestershire. He paid for the pavilion at Stanway cricket ground.^[29] In , he founded an amateur cricket team for friends of similarly limited playing ability, and named it the Allahakbarries under the mistaken belief that "Allah akbar" meant "Heaven help us" in Arabic (rather than "God is great").^[30] Some of the foremost known British authors from the era played on the team at various times, including H.

G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse, Jerome K. Jerome, G. K. Chesterton, A. A. Milne, E. W. Hornung, A. E. W. Mason, Walter Raleigh, E. V. Lucas, Maurice Hewlett, Owen Seaman (editor of Punch), Bernard Partridge, George Cecil Ives, George Llewelyn Davies (see below) and the son of Alfred Tennyson.

In , Barrie joined the newly formed Authors Cricket Club and also played for its cricket team, the Authors XI, alongside Doyle, Wodehouse and Milne. The Allahakbarries and the Authors XI continued to exist side by side until ^[9][31]

Barrie befriended Africa explorer Joseph Thomson and Antarctica explorer Robert Falcon Scott.^[32] He was godfather to Scott's son Peter, and was one of the seven people to whom Scott wrote letters in the final hours of his being during his expedition to the South Pole, asking Barrie to take care of his wife Kathleen and son Peter.

Barrie was so proud of the letter that he carried it around for the rest of his life.

In , his forwarder Addison Bright persuaded him to meet with Broadway producer Charles Frohman, who became his financial backer and a close ally, as well.

Frohman was responsible for producing the debut of Peter Pan in both England and the US, as skillfully as other productions of Barrie's plays. He famously declined a lifeboat seat when the RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat in the North Atlantic.

Actress Rita Jolivet stood with Frohman, George Vernon and Captain Alick Scott at the end of Lusitania's sinking, but she survived the sinking and recalled Frohman paraphrasing Peter Pan: 'Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure that life gives us.'^[36] Barrie had himself sailed on one of the Lusitania's final Atlantic crossings in September , during which rumours circulated amongst the passengers that the liner was to be transferred to the British Admiralty for troopship duties on arrival in New York.^[37]

His secretary from , Cynthia Asquith, was the daughter-in-law of H.

H. Asquith, British Prime Minister from to ^[38] In the s, Barrie met and told stories to the young daughters of the Duke of York, the future Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret.^[38] After meeting him, the three-year-old Princess Margaret announced, "He is my greatest partner and I am his greatest friend".^[26]

Marriage

Barrie became acquainted with actress Mary Ansell in , when he asked his friend Jerome K.

Jerome for a beautiful actress to play a role in his play Walker, London. The two became friends, and she helped his family to care for him when he fell very ill in and ^[9] They married in Kirriemuir on 9 July ,^[39] shortly after Barrie recovered, and Mary retired from the stage.

The wedding was a small ceremony in his parents' home, in the Scottish tradition. The association was reportedly unconsummated, and the couple had no children.

In , the Barries bought a home on Gloucester Road, in South Kensington.^[42] Barrie would take extended walks in nearby Kensington Gardens, and in the couple moved into a house directly overlooking the gardens at Bayswater Route.

Mary had a flair for interior design and set about transforming the ground floor, creating two large reception rooms with painted panelling and adding fashionable features, such as a conservatory.^[43] In the same year, Mary found Black Lake Cottage at Farnham in Surrey, which became the couple's "bolt hole" where Barrie could entertain his cricketing friends and the Llewelyn Davies family.^[44]

Beginning in mid, Mary had an affair with Gilbert Cannan (who was twenty years younger than she^[45] and an associate of Barrie in his anti-censorship activities), including a visit together to Black Lake Cottage, acknowledged only to the house staff.

When Barrie learned of the affair in July , he demanded that she end it, but she refused. To dodge the scandal of divorce, he offered a legal separation if she would agree not to see Cannan any more, but she still refused. Barrie sued for divorce on the grounds of infidelity; the divorce was granted in October ^[47] Knowing how painful the divorce was for him, some of Barrie's friends wrote to a number of newspaper editors asking them not to publish the story.

In the event, only three newspapers did. Barrie continued to support Mary financially even after she married Cannan, by giving her an annual allowance, which was handed over at a private dinner held on her and Barrie's wedding anniversary.^[45]

Llewelyn Davies family

The Llewelyn Davies family played an important part in Barrie's literary and personal life, consisting of Arthur (–), Sylvia (–) (daughter of George du Maurier),^[50] and their five sons: George (–), John (Jack) (–), Peter (–), Michael (–) and Nicholas (Nico) (–).

Barrie became acquainted with the family in , meeting George and Jack (and baby Peter) with their nurse (nanny) Mary Hodgson in London's Kensington Gardens. He lived nearby and often walked his Saint Bernard dog Porthos in the park.

He entertained the boys regularly with his ability to wiggle his ears and eyebrows, and with his stories. He did not meet Sylvia until a chance encounter at a dinner party in December. She told Barrie that Peter had been named after the title character in her father's novel, Peter Ibbetson.

Barrie became a regular visitor at the Davies common and a common companion to Sylvia and her boys, despite the fact that both he and she were married to other people.^[6] In , he invited the Davies family to Black Lake Cottage, where he produced an album of captioned photographs of the boys acting out a pirate adventure, entitled The Boy Castaways of Inky Lake Island.

Barrie had two copies made, one of which he gave to Arthur, who misplaced it on a train.^[53] The only surviving copy is held at the Beinecke Scarce Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.^[54]

The character of Peter Pan was invented to entertain George and Jack.

Barrie would say, to amuse them, that their little brother Peter could fly.

Barrie, was a Scottish novelist and playwright. Barrie was a prolific writer in his lifetime, but only Peter Pan has become a timeless classic that continues to delight both children and adults with its theme of never leaving the innocent realm of childhood, where wondrous things exist beyond the day-to-day realities. Critics have speculated that Peter Pan was a reflection of Barrie's own longing to not want to "grow up," both literally and figuratively, after the traumatic death of his brother in a childhood accident. This confrontation with death and mortality at a very young age set his existence on a course in hunt of an ideal world where growth and death had no negative impact.

He claimed that babies were birds before they were born; parents put bars on nursery windows to store the little ones from flying away. This grew into a tale of a baby lad who did fly away.

Arthur Llewelyn Davies died in , and "Uncle Jim" became even more involved with the Davies family, providing financial support to them.

(His income from Peter Pan and other works was easily adequate to provide for their living expenses and education.) Accompanying Sylvia's death in , Barrie claimed that they had recently been engaged to be married. Her will indicated nothing to that effect but specified her wish for "J.

M. B." to be trustee and guardian to the boys, along with her mother Emma, her brother Guy du Maurier and Arthur's brother Compton. It expressed her confidence in Barrie as the boys' caretaker and her aspire for "the boys to cure him (& their uncles) with absolute confidence & straightforwardness & to talk to him about everything." When copying the will informally for Sylvia's family a few months later, Barrie inserted himself elsewhere: Sylvia had written that she would like Mary Hodgson, the boys' nurse, to continue taking care of them, and for "Jenny" (referring to Hodgson's sister) to come and help her; Barrie instead wrote, "Jimmy" (Sylvia's nickname for him).

Sir J.M. Barrie was a Scottish dramatist, best known for writing Peter Pan in , or The Boy Who Would Never Grow Up. The son of Scottish weavers, he moved to London to pursue his interest.

Barrie and Hodgson did not get along well but served together as surrogate parents until the boys were grown.

Barrie also had friendships with other children, both before he met the Davies boys and after they had grown up, and there has since been unsubstantiated speculation that Barrie was a paedophile.^[61][62] One source for the speculation is a scene in the novel The Little Light Bird, in which the protagonist helps a small boy undress for bed, and at the boy's request they sleep in the same bed.^[63] However, there is no evidence that Barrie had sexual contact with children, nor that he was suspected of it at the moment.

Nico, the youngest of the brothers, denied as an senior that Barrie ever behaved inappropriately. "I don't believe that Uncle Jim ever experienced what one might call 'a stirring in the undergrowth' for anyone—man, female, or child", he stated.

"He was an innocent—which is why he could write Peter Pan." His relationships with the surviving Davies boys continued well beyond their childhood and adolescence.

The Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens, erected secretly overnight for May Morning in , was supposed to be modelled upon old photographs of Michael dressed as the character.

J.M. Barrie | Scottish Playwright & Novelist | Britannica, carousel: Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (/ ˈbæri /; 9 May – 19 June ) was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered as the author of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland and then moved to London, where he wrote several achieving novels and plays.

However, the sculptor, Sir George Frampton, used a different child as a model, leaving Barrie disappointed with the result. "It doesn't demonstrate the devil in Peter", he said.

Barrie suffered bereavements with the boys, losing the two to whom he was closest in their early twenties.

George was killed in action in , in the First World War.^[67] Michael, with whom Barrie corresponded daily while at boarding educational facility and university, drowned in , with his friend, Rupert Buxton,^[68] at a known danger see at Sandford Lock near Oxford, one month short of his 21st birthday.

Some years after Barrie's death, Peter compiled his Morgue from family letters and papers, interpolated with his possess informed comments on his family and their relationship with Barrie. Peter died in by throwing himself in front of an Underground train at Sloane Square station.

Death

Barrie died of pneumonia at a nursing home in Manchester Street, Marylebone on 19 June ^[70] He was buried at Kirriemuir next to his parents and two of his siblings.^[71] His birthplace at 9 Brechin Road is maintained as a museum by the National Trust for Scotland.^[72]

Barrie left the bulk of his estate to his secretary Lady Cynthia Asquith, but excluding the rights to all Peter Pan works (which included The Little White Bird, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up and the novel Peter and Wendy), whose he had previously given to Superb Ormond Street Hospital in London.

The surviving Llewelyn Davies boys received legacies, and he made provisions for his former wife Mary Ansell to receive an annuity during her lifetime.^[6]

His will also left £ to the Bower Free Church in Caithness to mark the memory of Rev James Winter who was to have married Barrie's sister in June but was killed in a fall from his horse in May Barrie had several connections to the Free Church of Scotland, including his maternal uncle Rev David Ogilvy (–), who was minister of Dalziel Church in Motherwell.^[73] James and his brother William Winter (also a Free Church minister) were both born in Cortachy the sons of Rev William Winter.

Cortachy is just west of Kirriemuir and the Winters seem closely connected to the Ogilvy family.^[74]

Biographies

Books

• Hammerton, J. A. (). Barrie: the Story of a Genius.

  New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.

• Darlington, W. A. (). J. M. Barrie. London and Glasgow: Blackie & Son. ISBN&#;.
• Chalmers, Patrick (). The Barrie Inspiration. Peter Davies.

  ISBN&#;

• Mackail, Denis ().
  Sir J. The son of Scottish weavers, he moved to London to pursue his interest in becoming a playwright. There he met the Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired his masterpiece. Based on Barrie's enchanting characters, Disney created the animated classic, Peter Panin

  Barrie: The Story of J. M. B. Modern York: C. Scribner's Sons. ISBN&#;.

• Dunbar, Janet (). J. M. Barrie: The Man Behind the Image. London: Collins. ISBN&#;.
• Birkin, Andrew (). J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys: The Real Story Behind Peter Pan (Revised&#;ed.).

  Yale University Press. ISBN&#;.

• Chaney, Lisa (). Hide-and-Seek with Angels: A Experience of J. M. Barrie. Arrow. ISBN&#;.
• Dudgeon, Piers (). Captivated: J. M. Barrie, the du Mauriers & the Dark Side of Neverland.

  Vintage Books. ISBN&#;.

• Telfer, Kevin (). Peter Pan's First XI: The Extraordinary Story of J. M. Barrie's Cricket Team. Sceptre. ISBN&#;.
• Ridley, Rosalind (). Peter Pan and the Mind of J. M. Barrie: An Exploration of Cognition and Consciousness. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

  ISBN&#;

• Dudgeon, Piers (). J. M. Barrie and the Male child Who Inspired Him. Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN&#;.

Journal

• Stokes, Sewell (November ). "James M Barrie". New York Theatre Arts Inc.

  25 (11): –

Film, television and stage

Honours

Personal

Barrie was created a baronet by King George V in He was made a member of the Order of Merit in

In , he was elected Rector of the University of St Andrews for a three-year word.

In , he delivered his celebrated Rectorial Address on Courage at St Andrews, and visited University College Dundee with Earl Haig to open its modern playing fields, with Barrie bowling a few balls to Haig.^[75] He served as Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh from to ^[76]

Barrie was the only person to receive the Independence of Kirriemuir in a ceremony on 7 June in Kirriemuir Town Hall where he was presented with a silver casket containing the freedom scroll.

The casket was made by silversmiths Brook & Son in Edinburgh in and is decorated with images of sites in Kirriemuir which held significant memories for Barrie: Kirriemuir Townhouse, Strathview, Window in Thrums, the statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and the Barrie Cricket Pavilion.

The casket is on demonstrate in the Kirrimuir Gateway to the Glens Museum in the Kirriemuir Town House.^[77]

Crest An open manual amid reeds all Proper. Escutcheon Barry of six Argent and Gules in chief a lion passant guardant counterchanged and issuant from the base reeds Proper. Motto Amour De La Bonte (Love of Goodness)[78]

Legacy

Tributes

On 9 May , Google celebrated J.M.

Barrie's th Birthday with a doodle.^[80][81]

Bibliography

Peter Pan

Other works by year

References