Second Star to the Right: Peter Pan in the Popular Imagination

Over a century after its first stage performance, Peter Pan has become deeply embedded in Western popular culture, as an enduring part of childhood memories, in every part of popular media, and in commercial enterprises.

Since 2003 the characters from this story have had a highly visible presence in nearly every genre of popular culture: two major films, a literary sequel to the original adventures, a graphic novel featuring a grown-up Wendy Darling, and an Argentinean novel about a children's book writer inspired by J. M. Barrie. Simultaneously, Barrie surfaced as the subject of two major biographies and a feature film. The engaging essays in Second Star to the Right approach Pan from literary, dramatic, film, television, and sociological perspectives and, in the process, analyze his emergence and preservation in the cultural imagination.

Allison B. Kavey is an assistant professor in the history department at CUNY John Jay College. She is the author of Worlds of Secrets: Books of Secrets and Popular Natural Philosophy in England, 1550-1600.

Lester D. Friedman is the Senior Scholar-in-Residence in the Media and Society Program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is the editor of American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations and the coeditor of the Screen Decades Series (both Rutgers University Press).