J. M. Barrie & the Lost Boys

Love this book. I read it after I saw 'Finding Neverland', a good movie, but this book is far far far better. It captures the real essence of Barrie, with letters from him, to him, about him and excepts from his works as his life unfolds. Not only is this book fabulously informative it also flows remarkably well for being so chock full of information. The narrative voice is very unabtrusive and is kept to a minimum letting the first person sources speak for themselves. The photographs are enchanting and really help one see how Barrie envisioned his own Neverland. It seems to capture how Barrie was an odd combination of innocent and adult. I would have loved to seen more on his life beyond the Davies, but that was not this book's purpose. I do think however, a summary as to the fates of the Davies boys at the end would have been in keeping with the narrative as the book does touch upon not only the effect they had on him, but the effect he had on them. Some of which seems to have been resented by the boys. This book serves as a great doorway into both Barrie's life and works. As anything read after this can be framed in the narrative of his life.

With the release of the film _Neverland_ to critical and popular acclaim, most people got their first introduction to the life of the creator of Peter Pan, James Matthew Barrie. Film biographies are notorious for their additions and deletions for dramatic or commercial purposes, and while _Neverland_ did fairly well in its telling of a limited part of the story, those who are interested in a larger and fuller picture will love reading _J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys: The Real Story behind Peter Pan_ (Yale University Press) by Andrew Birkin, in a recent new edition. Birkin's work first came out in 1979, after his trilogy of television plays on the theme. He says he is interested in filming an authentic Peter Pan, and he could be trusted to do so, when the original has already been turned into pantomime, cartoon, and the update by Robin Williams and Stephen Spielberg. His loving, sad, and wonderfully illustrated biography shows him to be our leading authority on the story of Peter Pan and how it came to be told. Barrie was born in 1861 in the weaving village of Kirriemuir in Scotland. When he was six, his older brother died, and Barrie realized that for their mother, the idealized elder brother would always be a boy of thirteen. The theme of the boy who never grew up was to be a constant in Barrie's novels and plays. He was notoriously quiet and shy, as he would be all his life, attracting little observation by others, but observing others constantly. He became a journalist and then a tremendously successful novelist and playwright. He married, but his real love was for children, and he and his wife (who left him for a lover fifteen years later) never had any. The "lost boys" of the title, and the originals of those in Peter Pan, were the five sons of Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, whom he befriended within nearby Kensington Gardens. The senior Davies were a model couple devoted to each other, but Barrie insinuated himself into the family by his overpowering sense of juvenile fun and by fostering the imaginations of the sons. He became a staple of the family, discomforting the boys' father and causing lifelong resentment in their nursemaid. The fantasy life he led with the boys in Kensington Gardens included dressing up in costume, and the many photographs reproduced here (frequently by Barrie himself) show the boys happily engaged in outdoor amateur theatricals. They sharpened his memory and preoccupation for childhood and were the inspiration for his literary output. Boys do grow up, of course; George was killed in World War I, and the twenty-year-old Michael drowned with a fellow Oxford undergraduate in an accident or suicide pact. Barrie was devastated; Peter observed that the Davies family had in the end brought him "so much more sorrow than happiness." Birkin's work is not a full biography, but an examination of his relationship with his five boys, and ends quickly after Michael's death. Jack and Nico had prosperous liv

Finally back in print after a quarter of a century, Andrew Birkin's J. M. Barrie & the Lost Boys: The Love Story That Gave Birth To Peter Pan (1979) is a fully realized, mesmerizing, and genuinely tragic book that succeeds on every level. As the title suggests, the book is not only a biography of Scottish playwright and novelist J. M. Barrie, but of the Llewelyn Davies family, whose five sons, with Barrie's dead brother, David, inspired the creation Peter Pan, one of Western literature's most enduring and suitably timeless figures. By drawing heavily on Barrie's notebooks as well as his and the Llewelyn Davies family's letters and other correspondence, the text allows the large cast of participants to tell their story in piecemeal fashion. The result, which resembles an elaborate mosaic, is a poignant reflection on tragic events, both those which might have been averted and those, like disease and the Great War, which could not have been. J. M. Barrie & the Lost Boys is also an excellent illustration of Freud's theory of Family Romance in both its constructive and destructive aspects. The sentimental Barrie was deeply tied to and haunted by his own familial relationships, a psychology he brought to and projected upon the Llewelyn Davies family after becoming enchanted by two of their young boys in Kensington Gardens. Barrie was a middle aged and childless man, if a very successful one, at that time in his life, and his manipulative and interloping intrusion into the family has been a subject of speculation by historians and literary scholars ever since. Though ostensibly nothing less than financially generous and well-intentioned, as Humphrey Carpenter illustrated in Secret Gardens (1985), even Barrie's earliest work inspired by the Llewelyn Davies boys, The Little White Bird (1902, later reissued as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens), contained material which suggested that Barrie's fascination with the boys was potentially inappropriate. In one passage, a very young boy, modeled on George Llewelyn Davies, invites himself into a grown man's bed with language that is simultaneously seductive, hesitant, and tender. The narrator, who stands in for Barrie, accepts the boy's invitation, stating, "It is what I have been wanting all the time," like a breathless, succumbing lover. Climbing into bed, the young boy then sleeps "on and across" the narrator, "retains possession" of the man's "finger," and "occasionally" awakens him to assert that "he was sleeping with me." So obsessively tied to the Llewelyn Davies boys was Barrie that when his favorite, the sensitive, brilliant, and troubled Michael, drowned under unusual circumstances at 17, Birkin is accurately able to state that Barrie's life was now rendered "utterly pointless" without him; Barrie's comment was "for ever and ever I am thinking of him." Though Michael undoubtedly loved Barrie, he was plagued by night terrors throughout his boyhood, which may have possibly arisen not only from B

J.M. Barrie is truly a genius and Birkin has captured this genius with all of its pain and dysfunction in this great biography. This new large paperback version of Birkin’s book is excellent. It contains all of the material from the original hardcover including a lot of photographs. This newest version also has an updated forward and provides a web link to the Author’s full collection of Barrie writings and photographs.I originally read the mass market size, paperback of this biography and was very pleased. However, I now realize how much I had missed, in terms of photographs and reproductions. This newest version is a real must-have for those interested in the life and work of Barrie.Birkin does an extraordinary job of showing us Barrie’s life and work and most importantly his relationship with the Llewelyn Davies family. He does all of this without passing judgement, which in my view is the true test of a good biographer. Too often history and biography falls prey to post-modern sensibilities and correctness.This story is touching and sad. Read this biography and then re-read some of the classic Barrie novels, they will come to life for you. One of my best reads of the year, highly recommended!

Wonderful news ... this new edition makes available a book that's been out-of print for much too long.Birkin completed the book when adapting the story of J M Barrie for a BBC mini-series, The Lost Boys. As well as writing Peter Pan, Barrie was in his time, regarded as a playwright the equal of George Bernard Shaw. That his work quickly fell out of favour may be due to its pathos and close relation to Barrie's own life.I stumbled across this book over ten years ago, and its poignancy, honestly and power have been with me ever since. It centres around the Llewelyn Davies family, which became the inspiration for Peter Pan, but went on to have an even more profound impact upon the life of the melancholic Scottish playwright. As one of the protagonists later wrote, the masses of photographs (extensively reproduced in the book) seem to foretell the whole sad story. Indeed, Birkin's strength is allowing the story to unfold through letters, images and quotation from Barrie's surprisingly autobiographical work. What emerges is the finest of biographies. Peter Pan acquires a whole new sad significance in the light of this book, and it captures the fading Edwardian twighlight exquisitely.Upon the death of the last of the Llewelyn Davies boys (after first publication), the majority of the material used in the book was bequeathed to Birkin, a ringing endorsement of his sensitive and perceptive retelling of the story.I cannot recommend this book too highly.