Peter Pan Read Free

as a writer. Within the first year of his studies, he managed to become a freelance drama critic for the Edinburgh
Courant
and reviewed plays in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and other cities. In addition, he joined a debating society and gradually learned to overcome his shyness. During his four years at the university he studied hard, attended the theater as much as possible, formed friendships with other male students, and finally earned his M.A. in April of 1882.
    Despite the degree, Barrie found himself in the same position in which he had been when he had graduated from Dumfries Academy four years earlier—with a great desire to become a writer, but with no job and no prospects for work. Thus it remained until the winter of 1882, when one of his sisters, Jane Ann, happened to see an advertisement for a journalist who could write lead articles for the
Nottingham Journal
, an English newspaper. Barrie applied on a lark, and to his great surprise, he received the post and an opportunity to write not only feature articles for the newspaper but also reviews, stories, and skits. Some of these writings were also published in London magazines. Unfortunately, by October of 1884, he was dismissed because the owners of the newspaper were losing money and decided to print syndicated articles rather than paying their own journalists.
    No sooner did Barrie return to Kirriemuir than he began making plans to move to London, where he had some success in selling articles to various magazines and newspapers. In March of 1885 he finally took up residence in London near the British Museum, and threw himself into his work. Within five years he was regarded as one of the most promising young writers in England. He published numerous articles and stories in the
St. James’s Gazette, Spectator, Chambers Journal
, and other newspapers and magazines, as well as writing skits and small plays. His first major book publication,
Auld Licht Idylls
(1888), a collection of sketches of rural Scotland during the early nineteenth century and based in part on his mother’s reminiscences, was a relative success. It was followed by a similar book,
A Window in Thrums
(1889), which did not do well. But his first novel,
The Little Minister
(1891), was hugely popular. Set in Scotland in 1840 during the Weavers’ Riots, it concerns a “little” minister who falls in love with a Gypsy and must contend with the people of his town, who object to his nonconformist behavior. The novel was adapted for the stage in 1897 and made a name for Barrie in England and America, not only as a novelist but also as a dramatist. However, before turning mainly to the theater, he honed his skills as a prose fiction writer.
    In 1896, after publishing collections of his stories and sketches, he produced two important works:
Margaret Ogilvy
, the biography of his mother, which in part created the legend of young Jamie, who could never replace his dead brother in his mother’s eyes; and
Sentimental Tommy
, which dealt with a young dreamer and had strong autobiographical elements that were also incorporated into the sequel,
Tommy and Grizel
(1900). The second novel was a harbinger of Peter Pan, with such notable passages by the fictitious narrator as:
    Poor Tommy! he was still a boy, he was ever a boy, trying sometimes, as now, to be a man, and always when he looked round he ran back to his boyhood as if he saw it holding out its arms to him and inviting him to come back and play. He was so fond of being a boy that he could not grow up…. But here, five and twenty years later, is the biography, with the title changed. You may wonder that I had the heart to write it. I do it, I have sometimes pretended to myself, that we may all laugh at the stripping of a rogue, but that was never my main reason. Have I been too cunning, or have you seen through me all the time? Have you discovered that I was really pitying the boy who was so fond of boyhood that he could not with years become a man, telling