The Plays of J. M. Barrie: Peter Pan or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up

6C J.M. Barrie. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1928. First edition

Notes

J. M. Barrie was first and foremost a playwright, and long before Peter Pan became famous as a book, it lived and breathed on the stage. By the turn of the 20th century, Barrie was already highly successful with his productions and celebrated for works such as The Admirable Crichton and Quality Street, which mixed wit, social observation, and emotional restraint. Peter Pan emerged gradually from his dramatic imagination, first appearing in embryonic form in The Little White Bird (1902) before fully taking shape as a stage play. Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up premiered in London in December 1904 and was conceived entirely for performance, relying on spectacle, stage illusion, music, and audience participation. Barrie continually revised the play over the years, treating it as fluid and theatrical rather than a fixed literary text, and for decades he resisted publishing a definitive script.

The play was finally printed in book form in 1928, when Hodder & Stoughton issued Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up as part of Barrie’s collected plays. This publication is regarded as the first authoritative edition of the play text, appearing more than twenty years after its debut on stage. The 1928 book reflects Barrie’s mature, settled version of the play, complete with stage directions and his characteristic blend of whimsy and melancholy. Its publication effectively fixed the theatrical Peter Pan in literary form and stands alongside Peter and Wendy (1911) as one of the two definitive texts of the story, preserving the version Barrie himself considered closest to his original dramatic vision.

Description

Canvas blue binding with inset on upper right corner, "The Plays of J.M. Barrie.” Original dust jacket reading, Peter Pan With a Dedicatory Preface To The Five. Chipping to the corners of jacket and loss to head and foot of spine. Good condition overall.