 J.M. Barrie Licensed by Creative Commons"So Mr Stevenson puzzles the critics, fascinating them until they are willing to judge him by the magnum opus he is to write by and by when the little books are finished. Over Treasure Island I let my fire die in winter without knowing that I was freezing. But the creator of Alan Breck has now published nearly twenty volumes. It is so much easier to finish the little works than to begin the great one, for which we are all taking notes. Mr Stevenson is not to be labeled novelist. He wanders the byways of literature without any fixed address"
(J.M Barrie, "Robert Louis Stevenson", British Weekly, vol 9 [2 November 1888])
James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) was a Scottish novelist and playwright. He studied at the University of Edinburgh before briefly becoming a journalist. His first novel was The Little Minister (1891). Although the work met with a poor critical reception, Barrie was popular with the general public, publishing works like Sentimental Tommy (1896), Margaret Ogilvy (1896) and Tommy and Grizel (1902).
Barrie was particularly interested in writing for the theatre. He wrote plays like The Admirable Crichton (1902) and What Every Woman Knows (1906).
He is best known for his character Peter Pan, the eternal youth. His play, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up was first performed in 1904. Peter and the other boys in the story were based on the children of Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Barrie’s friends). The character Wendy was inspired by W.E. Henley’s daughter, Margaret Emma. Barrie wrote several works about these characters including the novels The Little White Bird: or, Adventures in Kensington Gardens (1902), Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), When Wendy Grew Up: An Afterthought (1908) and Peter and Wendy (1911).
Barrie made an unhappy marriage to the actress Mary Ansell in 1894. The couple had no children and divorced in 1909. The author was made a baronet in 1913.
Barrie and Stevenson began their correspondence in 1892. RLS had now settled at Vailima in Samoa. In a letter from c. 18 February 1892 he outlined the reasons why he and Barrie ought to write to one another: “We are both Scots besides, and I suspect both rather Scotty Scots; my own Scotchness tends to intermittency, but is at times erisypelitous – if that be rightly spelt. Lastly, I have gathered we have both made our stages in the metropolis of the winds [Edinburgh]: our Virgil’s ‘gray metropolis’, and I count that a lasting bond. No place so brands a man” (The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Bradford A. Booth and Ernest Mehew, vol. vii [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], p. 238).
Barrie and RLS wrote about Scottishness, their own writing (RLS particularly admired Barrie’s A Window in Thrums [1889] and The Little Minister), and other authors (RLS descried Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles [1891]). RLS also wrote Barrie a long description of himself, his family and life at Vailima in a letter in April 1893.
Barrie wrote about RLS in “Robert Louis Stevenson” for the British Weekly (1888 - above). In the article he praised RLS’s versatility, but also suggested that readers had not yet seen the best of the author.
Stevenson extended several invitations for Barrie to visit him in Samoa. After his death, Barrie wrote “Had he lived another year, I should have seen him. All plans arranged for a visit to Vailima, ‘to settle on those shores for ever’, he wrote, or something to that effect, ‘and if my wife likes you what a time you will have, and if she does not, how I shall pity you’” (J.M. Barrie, I Can Remember Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. by Rosaline Masson [Edinburgh: W&R Chambers, 1922], p. 292).
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