Description

THE RARE FIRST APPEARANCE OF PETER PAN, SIGNED BY J.M. BARRIE

BARRIE, J.M. The Little White Bird. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1902. Octavo, original black cloth, top edge gilt.

Rare first edition, featuring the first appearance of Barrie’s immortal character, Peter Pan, signed on the half title by J.M. Barrie.

Barrie initially developed the character of Peter Pan from the idea that “‘all children in our part of London were once birds in the Kensington Gardens? very little people sometimes forget that they no longer have wings, and try to fly away through the window or chimney.’ The central chapters of [The Little White Bird] tell the story of one such child, Peter Pan, who ‘escaped from being a human when he was seven days old” (Carpenter and Pritchard, 320). The Peter Pan chapters of this novel were published separately in 1906 as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Barrie further developed the character into a play (Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, first performed in 1904. “It is certain that hardly any twentieth-century child can have failed to encounter Peter Pan? the tale itself is such an inspired amalgam of a dozen familiar and loved ingredients? [it] was an overwhelming triumph, and the cause of an immense revival of interest in fairy stories” (Eyre, 61). With illustrated frontispiece map of Kensington Gardens.

Occasional pinpoint foxing mainly to preliminary and concluding pages. An about-fine copy, rare and most desirable signed.