Peter Pan

Peter Pan is one of the best-known works of British children's literature. It exists in two versions: a play, first staged in London on 27 December 1904 under the title Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, and a novel published in 1911 as Peter and Wendy, which the author himself adapted from the stage text. Both tell the story of Peter, a mischievous boy who can fly and lives in Neverland, an island inhabited by mermaids, fairies, Native Americans and pirates.

The Scottish writer J. M. Barrie first conceived the character in stories he told to the sons of his friend Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, with whom he had formed a close bond, especially after her death from cancer. The name combines Peter, one of the boys, with Pan, the Greek god of the woodlands. Some critics, such as Andrew Birkin, have also suggested that the character draws on Barrie's elder brother David, who died in a skating accident at the age of fourteen, an event that deeply affected their mother. The character had already appeared in the adult novel The Little White Bird (1902), and in 1906 the chapters featuring him were published separately as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.

The plot follows the Darling children, Wendy, John and Michael, who listen to the stories Wendy invents in their London nursery. Peter Pan, who spies on them from outside the window with his fairy Tinker Bell, loses his shadow in their house and returns to retrieve it. Wendy sews it back onto his feet and agrees to travel with him to Neverland to act as mother to the Lost Boys. There the children have adventures with mermaids, Native Americans and pirates, and must confront Captain Hook, Peter's sworn enemy. With humour and a touch of melancholy, the story explores the wish never to grow up and the passage from childhood to adulthood.

The play was an immediate success and reached Broadway in 1905. Barrie kept revising it until its publication in 1928, and in 1929 he gave the rights to Great Ormond Street Hospital, a London children's hospital, which still holds them. The story has had lasting influence, inspiring pantomimes, stage musicals, television series and many films, including Walt Disney's famous animated version of 1953, as well as sequels and reinterpretations both official and unofficial.