Barrie, Sir James Matthew
Barrie, Sir James Matthew (1860–1937),Scottish creator of Peter Pan. He studied at the University of Edinburgh (of which he would become Chancellor in 1930) and was a journalist before freelancing in London. His first novel inspired the ‘Kailyard’ school with its quaint sentimentality, Scots dialect, and local colour. His material came from reminiscences of his mother, who never overcame the death of her eldest son, whom Barrie sought to replace. Critics find an intricate Oedipal relationship reflected in his novels and plays with fantasy settings, character definition, problematic marriages, and manipulative women. Sentimentality and portrayal of contemporary society especially date his theatre, which has been labelled ‘childish’ and inferior to the social comedies or intellectual dramas of contemporaries like Wilde or Shaw.
It was precisely this naïve quality, however,...
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