Peter Pan (Collectors Library)

Peter Pan is a fantasy of extraordinary imagination, and a national treasure. It has everything—airborne children, mocking mermaids, bloodthirsty pirates, and a homicidal crocodile with a nasty tick. In this novelization of the original play, J.M. Barrie brings the cast and the action of the drama brilliantly to life on the page. We travel to the surreal world of Neverland, and meet the true characters of the story, as Barrie created them: Wendy Darling and Captain Hook, Tinker Bell and Tiger Lily, and above all, the enchanting, boastful boy who refuses to grow up.

James M. Barrie was born in 1860, the ninth of ten children of hard-working parents in Scotland’s jute-weaving industry. Fascinated by stories of her own life told him by his mother, he was determined to write, finding work on the Nottingham Journal after graduating from Edinburgh University. In 1885, he moved to London as a freelance writer and successfully sold the Auld Licht Idylls, a volume based on his mother’s tales. By the time Peter Pan opened on the London stage in 1904, Barrie had written more than thirty novels and plays, many autobiographical, and several of them major hits such as The Little Minister, Quality Street and The Admirable Crichton. Knighted and awarded the Order of Merit, he continued writing into old age. He died in 1937.