Barrie's telling of the boy who won't grow up opens not with Neverland but with the very ordinary Darling household, which makes the leap out the nursery window land harder. The narrator talks straight to the reader throughout, dry and knowing ("Two is the beginning of the end"), which makes it a genuine pleasure to read aloud rather than just perform. A longer one for children ready to sit with real chapters.
About this book
Staged as a play in 1904 · Published as a novel in 1911 · Royalties still support a children's hospital
Barrie invented Peter Pan for the five young sons of the Llewelyn Davies family, whom he had befriended in Kensington Gardens. The character first turned up in a 1902 novel for adults, then in the 1904 stage play "Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up". Barrie wrote out the full story as this novel, Peter and Wendy, in 1911.
In 1929 Barrie gave the rights to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital for children in London. Under UK law the hospital holds a perpetual right to royalties whenever the work is published commercially. A free catalogue like this one owes nothing, but the gift still helps fund the hospital today.
The copy on this shelf is the full original text of Peter and Wendy.
Chapters
A long one: read it a chapter a night.
- Chapter I. PETER BREAKS THROUGH
- Chapter II. THE SHADOW
- Chapter III. COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
- Chapter IV. THE FLIGHT
- Chapter V. THE ISLAND COME TRUE
- Chapter VI. THE LITTLE HOUSE
- Chapter VII. the Home Under the Ground
- Chapter VIII. THE MERMAIDS’ LAGOON
- Chapter IX. THE NEVER BIRD
- Chapter X. THE HAPPY HOME
- Chapter XI. WENDY’S STORY
- Chapter XII. the Children Are Carried Off
- Chapter XIII. Do You Believe in Fairies?
- Chapter XIV. THE PIRATE SHIP
- Chapter XV. “HOOK OR ME THIS TIME”
- Chapter XVI. THE RETURN HOME
- Chapter XVII. WHEN WENDY GREW UP
Public domain. Source text via Project Gutenberg, PG boilerplate removed. View the source edition