Peter Pan [antikvár]

Introduction by Naomi Lewis It is a strange fact - yet should it really be a surprise? - that no one can say exactly when Peter Pan was born. I do not mean the magic boy, who claimed to be no more than a few days old, but the tale or idea itself. There are hints of someone very like Peter in earlier books and plays by J. M. Barrie, but these were written for adults and all we know for certain of Peter Pan's history is that the familiar play which is still produced each year in the Christmas holidays was first performed on 27 December 1904 at The Duke of York's Theatre in London, and that the full 'story' version was not set down on paper until 1911. But then everything in the history of Peter Pan is, very properly, extraordinary. Except for Alice, it must be the most thoroughly English of all invented legends. (Kensington Gardens seem the perfect setting for the Peter Pan statue - you know the one, with animals playing round Peter's feet as he tootles on his pipe.) Yet it was written by a Scotsman who was a grown man before he left the North. Introduction by Naomi Lewis It is a strange fact - yet should it really be a surprise? - that no one can say exactly when Peter Pan was born. I do not mean the magic boy, who claimed to be no more than a few days old, but the tale or idea itself. There are hints of someone very like Peter in earlier books and plays by J. M, Barrie, but these were written for adults and all we know for certain of Peter Pan's history is that the familiar play which is still produced each year in the Christmas holidays was first performed on 27 December 1904 at The Duke of York's Theatre in London, and that the full 'story' version was not set down on paper until 1911. But then everything in the history of Peter Pan is, very properly, extraordinary. Except for Alice, it must be the most thoroughly English of all invented legends. (Kensington Gardens seem the perfect setting for the Peter Pan statue - you know the one, with animals playing round Peter's feet as he tootles on his pipe.) Yet it was written by a Scotsman who was a grown man before he left the North.