Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham

List of Illustrations

1. ‘The Kensington Gardens are in London, where the King lives’

2. ‘The lady with the balloons, who sits just outside’

3. ‘Old Mr. Salford was a crab-apple of an old gentleman who wandered all day in the Gardens’

4. ‘When he heard Peter’s voice he popped in alarm behind a tulip’

5. ‘Put his strange case before old Solomon Caw’

6. ‘After this the birds said that they would help him no more in his mad enterprise’

7. ‘For years he had been quietly filling his stocking’

8. ‘Fairies are all more or less in hiding until dusk’

9. ‘These tricky fairies sometimes slyly change the board on a ball night’

10. ‘When her Majesty wants to know the time’

11. ‘Peter Pan is the fairies’ orchestra’

12. ‘A chrysanthemum heard her, and said pointedly, Hoity-toity, what is this?’

13. ‘Shook his bald head and murmured, Cold, quite cold.’

14. ‘Fairies never say, We feel happy; what they say is, We feel dancey.’

15. ‘Looking very undancey indeed’

16. ‘Building the house for Maimie’

Biography

of

J. M. Barrie

James Matthew Barrie was born on 9the May 1860 in Kirriemuir, Angus, Scotland.

He was the ninth of ten children (two of whom died before his birth), born to Calvinist parents, David Barrie and Margaret Ogilvy. Barrie was sent to Glasgow Academy at the age of 8, where he was looked after by two of his older siblings, Alexander and Mary, who taught there. He went on to study at the Forfar Academy, and then at Dumfries Academy. He became an avid reader of penny dreadfuls and works by authors such as Robert Michael Ballantyne and James Fenimore Cooper. This love of fiction led Barrie, and his friends at Dumfries, to form a drama club in which he produced his first play, Bandelero the Bandit.

Barrie’s desire to follow a career was not approved of by his parents, who wished him to go into a profession such as the ministry. However, they arrived at a compromise when he agreed to attend University, but would study literature. He received his M.A. From Edinburgh University in 1882.

After a brief spell as a staff journalist at the Nottingham Journal, Barrie returned to Kirriemuir and began writing stories based on the tales that his mother had told him about the town. He submitted these to the newspaper St. James’s Gazette in London who liked his work. He ended up writing a series of them, which served as the basis for his first novels: Auld Licht Idylls (1888), A Window in Thrums (1890), and The Little Minister (1891).

Alongside his novels, Barrie began to produce many works for the theatre. His first venture into the medium was a biography of Richard Savage which he co-wrote with H. B. Marriott. This was only performed once and was critically panned. However, his next theatrical work Ibsen’s Ghost (or Toole Up-to-Date) (1891), a parody of Henrik Ibsen’s dramas Hedda Gabler and Ghosts, was much more favourably received. It was during his third play that he met his future wife, the young actress, Mary Ansell. The pair were married on 9th July 1894. Unfortunately, Mary had an affair which Barrie learned of in 1909 and the couple were divorced. They had no children together.

Barrie was very well connected in literary circles. One testament to this, was his role in founding an amateur cricket team that included members such as: Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse, Jerome K. Jerome, and G. K. Chesterton.

Barrie’s lasting legacy to the world was his creation of Peter Pan. This character first appeared in the The White Little Bird, serialised in the United States and then published in a single volume in the UK in 1902. The work that catapulted his character to become a household name was Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. This was first performed as a play on 27th December 1904, but in 1911 Barrie adapted it into the novel Peter and Wendy. Interestingly, the name Wendy was not in common use at the time, but his work popularised it. The name was actually inspired by the daughter of friend and poet William Ernest Henley, who called Barrie ‘Friendy’, but could not pronounce her Rs very well and so it came out as ‘Fwendy’. Upon his death, Barrie left the copyright to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

Barrie died on 19th June 1937, of pneumonia. He is buried next to his parents and two of his siblings at Kirriemuir.

Biography

of

Arthur Rackham

Arthur Rackham (19 September 1867 – 6 September 1939) was one of the most celebrated artists of the British Golden Age of Illustration; an artist who still delights both young and old over a century later. The ‘Golden Age’ lasted from the latter quarter of the nineteenth century until just after the First World War and marked an amazing upsurge in the popularity, abundance and quality of illustrated works. Improvements in printing technology allowed publishers to produce lavish colour illustrations for the first time, a development which enabled Rackham to embark on the most prolific and prosperous creative work ever enjoyed by an English illustrator. Whether producing whimsical children’s images or murkier, foreboding drawings for adults, Rackham’s unique style of illustration was incredibly sought after. He eventually contributed to over 150 books, magazines and periodicals.

Rackham was born in London as one of twelve siblings, the third surviving child of Annie and Alfred Rackham. After a brief sojourn in Australia due to poor health, he spent his early education at the prestigious City of London School. Rackham won a couple of prizes for drawing during his school days, but showed little of the imaginative genius which marked his adult representations. Immediately after leaving school, Rackham started work as a clerk at the Westminster Fire Office which financed his burgeoning artistic studies at the Lambeth School of Art. By 1892 however, Rackham left this somewhat banal clerking job and began reporting and illustrating for a number of London newspapers; ‘distasteful hack work’ as he described it. During this period Rackham contributed occasional illustrations to magazines such as Scraps and Chums, efforts decidedly indicative of an artist in search of a style. His first book illustrations were for To the Other Side, a travel guide and now particularly rare book, and the Dolly Dialogues; published in 1893 and 1894 respectively. These publications marked the beginning of Rackham’s long and illustrious career.

The first book illustrated specifically on commission was The Zankiwank and the Bletherwitch (1896), which marked the flowering of Rackham’s lighter side. Whilst not the fantastical work of Rackham’s later career, it presages the exuberant frivolity which was to become a significant element of his work. The real turning point came in 1900 however, when Rackham met the portrait painter Edith Starkie. She was to be ‘his most stimulating, severest critic’ and future wife. Starkie helped Rackham expand his artistic range; moving away from simpler techniques of pure line drawing, towards intricate washes of colour. This shift could not have come at a more fortuitous moment, as technological advances in the printing process meant that Rackham’s images could be photo-mechanically reproduced, thus removing the traditional middle-man of the engraver. This