Peter and Wendy

J. M. Barrie

Feb 2014 · Harper Collins

About this ebook

Peter and Wendy is J. M. Barrie’s most famous work. It’s also known as Peter Pan. It started out as a play in 1904 and in 1911 was published as a novel. It tells the story of Wendy Darling, her brothers and their adventures with Peter Pan and his gang of Lost Boys in Neverland. Peter meets Wendy as he listens to bedtime stories outside of her London home and invites her to come to Neverland to be a mother to his Lost Boys. She and her brothers go and have many adventures. They also meet Peter’s sidekick, Tinkerbell the fairy, and his enemy—Captain Hook. Peter Pan has been adapted to the stage and screen many times and is a children’s classic.

Ratings and reviews

Very enjoyable, and was worth beyond measure the small price paid.

About the author

J. M. Barrie was a Scottish author and dramatist best known for his enduring children’s tale Peter and Wendy, also known as Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. The son of a family of small-town weavers, Barrie moved to London after completing his education in Scotland. Once in London, he met the Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired him to write about a baby who experiences a magical adventure in Kensington Gardens (The Little White Bird). The boys also motivated him to write Peter and Wendy, a whimsical fairy tale about an ageless boy who sweeps an ordinary girl off to the fantasy world of Neverland. Peter and Wendy was so influential that it overshadowed all of his previous works. Barrie became guardian to the Davies boys following the untimely deaths of their parents before Peter and Wendy, already a play, was published as a novel. Before his own death in 1937, Barrie bestowed the rights and income from Peter and Wendy, and all other Peter Pan-related works, to London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, which continues to benefit from them today.