Peter Pan

About this book

One night Peter Pan, the boy who never grows up, flies in through the nursery window of the Darling family in London to find his lost shadow, and Wendy sews it back on for him. He teaches her and her brothers John and Michael to fly, with the help of a little fairy dust from Tinker Bell, and takes them 'second to the right, and straight on till morning' to the Neverland. There Wendy becomes a mother to the Lost Boys, they meet mermaids and pirates, and Peter faces his enemy Captain Hook, whose hand was eaten by a crocodile that has also swallowed a ticking clock.

Context and significance

J. M. Barrie first told the story as a play in 1904 and turned it into this novel, Peter and Wendy, in 1911; in 1929 he gave the rights to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, which still benefits from them. Beneath the adventure is a bittersweet story about growing up and the mothers who wait at home. Peter first appeared in Barrie's The Little White Bird.

About the author