Was Peter Pan a Play Before It Was a Book? How Barrie's Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up Was Born

Peter Pan began in a 1902 adult novel, became a hit play in 1904 and a novel, Peter and Wendy, in 1911. How the story grew, and who earns from it.

Neither, strictly: Peter Pan first appeared in J. M. Barrie's 1902 novel for adults, The Little White Bird, then became famous through the stage play Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, which opened in London on 27 December 1904, and only in 1911 did Barrie turn the play into the novel Peter and Wendy. So the story most people know, with Wendy, Tinker Bell and Captain Hook, was a play first and a book second. The baby Peter of the earliest version is a very different creature, and following how he changed is one of the best ways to understand the whole story.

A baby in Kensington Gardens

In The Little White Bird (1902), and in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), which reprinted those chapters, Peter is only seven days old. He flies out of his nursery to Kensington Gardens in London, where fairies and birds teach him to fly, and Barrie describes him as "betwixt-and-between", half boy and half bird. This Peter is not yet the leader of the Lost Boys; he is a strange, sad, magical infant who cannot go home.

The boys behind the boy

Barrie created the character in stories he told to the sons of his friend Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. The name joins Peter, after one of those boys, Peter Llewelyn Davies, with Pan, the Greek god. The pipes Peter plays also point to the god Pan.

There may be a sadder source too. Barrie's older brother David died the day before his fourteenth birthday, and Peter may have been partly based on him: a boy who stays a boy forever.

1904: the play that made him famous

The play premiered at the Duke of York's Theatre in London on 27 December 1904. It is the work that first made the character popular. In that first production Peter wore a reddish tunic and dark green tights; the all-green costume we expect today became more common from the 1920s.

One tradition from the stage still surprises newcomers: Peter is traditionally played by a woman, although men can play him too. The play itself was not printed until 1928, almost a quarter of a century after its first night.

1911: Peter and Wendy

The novel Peter and Wendy was published on 18 October 1911 in Britain by Hodder & Stoughton, and three days later in the United States by Charles Scribner's Sons, with illustrations by F. D. Bedford. It opens with one of the most famous first lines in children's literature: "All children, except one, grow up."

Peter visits the Darling family's house in Bloomsbury and loses his shadow, which Wendy sews back on. He invites Wendy and her brothers John and Michael to Neverland, where Wendy is to be a mother to the Lost Boys.

Neverland, Tinker Bell and Captain Hook

Neverland is an island of fairies, pirates and mermaids, which Barrie says looks different to every child and "wakes up" when Peter comes back from London. Tinker Bell, "Tink", is Peter's jealous fairy friend; she tricks a Lost Boy into shooting Wendy, who is saved by an acorn Peter gave her.

Captain Hook lost his right hand to Peter in a duel. A crocodile swallowed the hand and a ticking clock, so the crocodile follows Hook everywhere and the ticking warns him it is near. When Hook leaves poison for Peter, Tinker Bell drinks it, and she is saved only when the audience says they believe in fairies. In the end Peter defeats Hook, who falls into the crocodile's jaws.

An ending that is not quite happy

The Darlings adopt the Lost Boys, and Peter promises to come back for Wendy every spring. But in the epilogue Wendy has grown up and has a daughter, Jane, and Peter takes Jane to Neverland as his new mother. Critics see the central theme as the conflict between childhood innocence and adult responsibility, with a real element of tragedy. Peter's own attitude is summed up in his line "To die will be an awfully big adventure."

Modern readers also notice what has aged badly: critics have argued that the depiction of the "Piccaninny" tribe uses racist caricatures.

A statue overnight and a gift to a hospital

Barrie commissioned the sculptor George Frampton to make a statue of Peter, and it was put up overnight in Kensington Gardens on 30 April 1912, as a May Day surprise for London's children.

In 1929 Barrie gave the copyright of Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital, the London children's hospital, and UK law still grants the hospital royalties. Every new production in Britain therefore helps sick children, which is a fitting afterlife for a story about the end of childhood.

Disney, Broadway and the "Peter Pan syndrome"

The story was filmed as a silent film in 1924, as Walt Disney's animated film in 1953 and as a live-action film directed by P. J. Hogan in 2003; on Broadway, the 1954 musical starred Mary Martin. In 1983 the American psychologist Dan Kiley popularised the phrase "Peter Pan syndrome" in a book about men who have never grown up.

Learn with Peter Pan: English expressions

Expression	Meaning	Example
a Peter Pan	an adult who refuses to act grown-up	At forty he's still a bit of a Peter Pan.
to grow up	to become an adult, or act like one	Oh, grow up! It's only a game.
never-never land	an imaginary, ideal place	His business plan lives in never-never land.
to clap for something	to show support by applauding	Clap if you believe in fairies!
an awfully big adventure	a very big, exciting experience	Moving abroad was an awfully big adventure.

Try this: Barrie's first line is "All children, except one, grow up." Write your own first line in the same pattern, "All ___, except one, ___", about your family, your class or your city, then add two sentences about the one exception.