The Little White Bird (1902) is a novel by J. M. Barrie. Inspired by his friendship with George Llewelyn Davies, the grandson of writer George du Maurier, Barrie penned this heartwarming tale of imagination and adventure featuring for the first time his beloved character Peter Pan. Broken into short episodes, The Little White Bird follows Captain W., a childless veteran, on his visits to David and his family in Kensington Gardens. Through their friendship, David receives an education in wonder, while the Captain learns what it could feel like to be a father. Set in Victorian London, the novel follows Captain W. on his long walks through the city. With no family of his own, he finds comfort in friendship with David, the son of a local governess. Enchanted by the Captain’s vibrant imagination, David loves most of all his tales of Peter Pan, a magical boy who never grows old, who lives with fairies and never says no to adventure. One night, the story goes, a young girl is locked out of her house in Kensington Gardens past dark. Scared and cold, she finds safety with Peter and the fairies, who have gathered to celebrate life with a magnificent ball. Written for children and adults alike, The Little White Bird was the book that started it all, launching Barrie’s career as a popular storyteller whose tales of the present day are filled with the wit and wonder of history’s greatest fairytales. This edition of J. M. Barrie’s The Little White Bird is a classic work of Scottish literature reimagined for modern readers.
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J. M. Barrie (1860-1937) was a Scottish novelist and playwright. Born in Kirriemuir, Barrie was raised in a strict Calvinist family. At the age of six, he lost his brother David to an ice-skating accident, a tragedy which left his family devastated and led to a strengthening in Barrie’s relationship with his mother. At school, he developed a passion for reading and acting, forming a drama club with his friends in Glasgow. After graduating from the University of Edinburgh, he found work as a journalist for the Nottingham Journal while writing the stories that would become his first novels. The Little White Bird (1902), a blend of fairytale fiction and social commentary, was his first novel to feature the beloved character Peter Pan, who would take the lead in his 1904 play Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, later adapted for a 1911 novel and immortalized in the 1953 Disney animated film. A friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, George Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells, Barrie is known for his relationship with the Llewelyn Davies family, whose young boys were the inspiration for his stories of Peter Pan’s adventures with Wendy, Tinker Bell, and the Lost Boys on the island of Neverland.
