J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie - A Famous Scottish Playwright and Novelist
Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860 - 1937) J. M. Barrie, the author who would not grow up, was born at 9 Brechin Road, Kirriemuir, Angus (the village he was to immortalize in his stories as 'Thrums'), the child of a Kirriemuir weaver, he was the second youngest of the 10 children. J. M. Barrie was educated at Glasgow Academy, Dumfries Academy and Edinburgh University. He began his career as a journalist joining the staff of the Nottingham Journal in 1883 (which merged with the London literary scene in 1885). Barrie's mother, Margaret Ogilvy, had been the dominating influence of his childhood and it was her stories of small-town life which formed the basis of the vignettes which gave him his first literary success and but by the time he was 40 he had produced a good number of novels and other prose works. Such works as Auld Licht Idylls in 1888 and A Window in Thrums in 1889 proved popular examples of whatwas known as "Kailyard" fiction, in which the simplicity of country people was used to divert more sophisticated readers. In 1891 his first novel, The Little Minister, was published. His subsequent novels led to his first real stage success, with a dramatization of The Little Minister (1897) which netted him £80000, a vast sum in those days.
About 1900 it became apparent that Barrie's real flair was for drama. In 1903 he had no fewer than three plays on the London stage: Quality Street (1902), The Admirable Crichton and Little Mary. In the following year came Peter Pan, which greatly extended the scope of his appeal. Other well-known plays were What Every Woman Knows in 1908, A Kiss for Cinderella in 1916, Dear Brutus in 1917, and Mary Rose in 1920.
Barrie's chief virtues as a writer were the ability to delight and a firm grasp of the requirements of the stage, though in much of his work he was to present-day taste excessively sentimental and whimsical. A good example of his Scots work is seen in this extract from Sentimental Tommy (1896) in which he talks about some of the 'irregular schools' (schools with untrained 'teachers') in Scottish burghs before the Education Acts of 1872 and 1918:
Last comes the Hanky School, which was for the genteel and for the common who contemplated soaring. You were not admitted to it in corduroys or barefooted, nor did you pay weekly; no your father called four times a year with the money in an envelope. He was shown into the blue-andwhite room, and there, after business had been transacted, very nervously on Miss Ailie's part, she offered him his choice between ginger wine and what she falteringly called wh-wh-whisky. He partook in the polite national manner, which is thus:
'You will take something, Mr Cortachy?' 'No, I thank you, ma'am.'
'A little ginger wine?'
'It agrees ill with me.'
'Then a little wh-wh-whisky?'
'You are over kind.'
'Then may I?'
'I am not heeding.'
'Perhaps, though, you don't take?' 'I can take it or want it.'
'Is that enough?'
'It will do perfectly.'
'Shall I fill it up?'
'As you please ma'am.'
Hanky School: The Miss Adams's school, Kirriemuir, which Barrie attended
Many regard the play Peter Pan (1904) as Barrie's greatest work, whose tale of the boy who would not grow up still strikes a chord with modern children. The psychological overtones of the play reflect Barrie's own complex personality, his sexual inadequacy and obsession with childhood, which caused his 1894 marriage to the beautiful actress Mary Ansell to fail in 1909. After his divorce Barrie moved to the Adelphi, London, and remained there for the rest of his lonely life. He received many academic honours, including the Rectorship of St Andrews University, and he was knighted in 1913; the Order of Merit followed in 1922. He is buried in Kirriemuir cemetery.
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