"Stars are beautiful, but they may not take part in anything, they must just look on forever." "To die will be an awfully big adventure." "All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust." "Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting." "The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it." "Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it." "When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies." "Wendy," Peter Pan continued in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able to resist, "Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys." "Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time."

The untold story behind Peter Pan The shocking account of J. M. Barrie's abuse and exploitation of the du Maurier family.

What kind of man creates a boy who never grows up? More than 100 years after Peter Pan first appeared on the London stage, author J. M. Barrie remains one of the most complex and enigmatic figures in modern literature. A few facts, of course, are widely known: Peter Pan made Barrie the richest author of his time, and he bequeathed the royalties to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. He was married, but later divorced, and he was devoted to the orphaned sons of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, one of whom was named Peter. And then the rumors begin—about the nature of his marriage; about his precise relationship with the Davies boys, whose guardian he became; about the fantasies and demons that determined his achievements. In this brilliant biography, Lisa Chaney goes beyond the myths to discover the fascinating, frequently misunderstood man behind the famous boy. James Matthew Barrie was born in a village in Scotland in 1860, the ninth of 10 children of a linen-weaver and his wife. When James was six years old, his older brother died in a skating accident, and his mother began her withdrawal into grief. It is not an exaggeration to say that Barrie's entire life—both his professional triumphs as a writer and his personal tragedies—led up to the creation of Peter Pan, the play where "all children except one grow up." As Lisa Chaney explores Barrie's own struggles to grow up, she deepens our understanding both of his most famous character and of the complex relationship between life and art.

This literary biography is “a story of obsession and the search for pure childhood . . . Moving, charming, a revelation” (Los Angeles Times). J. M. Barrie, Victorian novelist, playwright, and author of Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, led a life almost as interesting as his famous creation. Childless in his marriage, Barrie grew close to the five young boys of the Davies family, ultimately becoming their guardian and 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 family and their circle, to describe Barrie’s life, the tragedies that shaped him, and the wonderful world of imagination he created for the boys. Updated with a new preface and including photos and illustrations, this “absolutely gripping” read reveals the dramatic story behind one of the classics of children’s literature (Evening Standard). “A psychological thriller . . . One of the year’s most complex and absorbing biographies.” —Time “[A] fascinating story.” —The Washington Post

A simplified retelling of the adventures of Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up.

Reproduction of the original: Better Dead by J.M. Barrie

Full text. How would you feel if your social position demands you to behave one way and your conscience asks you to behave in another way? When you are so conditioned by the social norms that you fail to recognize the faults in your actions eventhough your conscience pulls you back most of the time. This is a story of a person who faces that dilemma. Quote: It is not correct taste to know the name of a club waiter, so I must apologise for knowing William's, and still more for not forgetting it. If, again, to speak of a waiter is bad form, to speak bitterly is the comic degree of it. But William has disappointed me sorely. There were years when I would defer dining several minutes that he might wait on me.