Barrie, James Matthew

J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) charted the various shifts in taste, sensibility, and mores as Victorian Britain moved towards the modern age. Born in Scotland, he moved to London as an adult and became very much part of the literary and social scene of the first two decades of the twentieth century. He wrote some forty works for the stage (including twenty‐eight plays and a comic opera), eleven novels, many other volumes of reminiscences, sketches and tales, and even became involved in filmmaking. In turn, a number of his plays have been made into films and, more recently, after a period of neglect, revived on stage. However, it isPeter Pan(1904) that made Barrie's name known worldwide: a character that has become iconic of the carefree innocence of childhood, though Barrie's creation has far darker undertones.