Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sir J. M. Barrie
-
Standard Name: Barrie, Sir J. M.
Used Form: Sir James Barrie
Used Form: Sir James Matthew Barrie
SJMB
began his career in the late nineteenth century as a journalist, then moved to short stories, then novels, then plays. Those of his plays which survive in the repertoire, for professionals or amateurs, all involve departures from actuality, and purposeful suspension of the laws of space and time. Far and away the most famous, the basis of Barrie's continuing fame, is the adult play which became a children's classic, Peter Pan.
It was dedicated to J. M. Barrie
, who was now famous as the author of Peter Pan.
Tytler, Sarah. Three Generations. J. Murray, 1911.
prelims
Education
Daisy Ashford
In the preface to Daisy's novel, The Young Visiters, J. M. Barrie
describes the young DA
as a girl who read everything that came her way, including, as the context amply proves, the grown-up...
Employer
Lady Cynthia Asquith
Having much enjoyed nursing, LCA
did her first day as private secretary to the writer J. M. Barrie
, for a promised salary of four or five hundred pounds a year (which, however, proved to...
Family and Intimate relationships
George Egerton
Bright first had a column in the Evening Sun, and later wrote for the Daily Express and the Pall Mall Gazette. He was sub-editor at the Evening Sun and night-editor at the Daily...
Family and Intimate relationships
Rosamund Marriott Watson
She probably met the handsome Watson
, a novelist who was, like her first husband, an Australian, in 1893 when he attended practices of the cricket team of which he and her second husband were...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Cynthia Asquith
In less than three months LCA
lost in rapid succession her mother
, her eldest (institutionalised) son, her patron J. M. Barrie
, and her father
: it was Barrie's death which seemed to distress her most.
DB
's younger sister, Sylvia, later Lady Brooke
, born in 1885, is herself of no minor literary significance. She authored numerous works including two autobiographies, romance novels, and short stories, and claimed J. M. Barrie
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Cynthia Asquith
LCA
's other sons, after John, were Michael, born on 25 July 1914 at Sussex Place, and Simon
, born on 20 August 1919 (after she had planned on having a girl to be...
Family and Intimate relationships
Angela Thirkell
J. M. Barrie
was her godfather.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Cynthia Asquith
She had a romantic friendship during the years 1918 and 1919 with Desmond MacCarthy
, who was less than ten years her senior and a member of the Bloomsbury group.
DDM
's aunt Sylvia du Maurier
(later Sylvia Llewelyn Davies) became a friend of James Barrie
, whose Peter Pan was in part inspired by her five small sons.
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Cynthia Asquith
Barrie
was a famous writer making huge sums of money when LCA
met him. He was about the age of her father, had been unsuccessfully married, and doted on the idea of motherhood and on...
Friends, Associates
George Egerton
After the success of her Keynotes, GE
became acquainted with the literary and intellectual world. Among her new acquaintances she expressed admiration for Havelock Ellis
but called W. B. Yeats
a poseur.
Egerton, George. A Leaf from the Yellow Book. Editor White, Terence de Vere, Richards Press, 1958.
34
Friends, Associates
Katharine Tynan
Living in a suburb of London, KT
frequented the heart of English literary culture. She had already joined London's Irish Literary Society
, and was later appointed its Honorary Vice-President.
Tynan, Katharine. The Years of the Shadow. Constable, 1919.
Rose, Jonathan, and Patricia J. Anderson, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 106. Gale Research, 1991.
106: 291-2
1901: The publication of George Douglas Brown's...
Writing climate item
1901
The publication of George Douglas Brown
's novel The House with the Green Shutters marked the first attack on the Scottish school of fiction that was afterwards known as Kailyard.
Campbell, Ian. Kailyard. Ramsay Head, 1981.
7-17
Blake, George. Barrie and the Kailyard School. Arthur Barker, 1951.
9-18
Dickson, Beth. “Annie S. Swan and O. Douglas: Legacies of the Kailyard”. A History of Scottish Women’s Writing, edited by Douglas Gifford et al., Edinburgh University Press, 1997, pp. 329-46.
329, 340
Hart, Francis Russell. The Scottish Novel: From Smollett to Spark. Harvard University Press, 1978.
114
May 1926: Eighteen-year-old actress Peggy Ashcroft...
Building item
May 1926
Eighteen-year-old actress Peggy Ashcroft
made her professional debut in J. M. Barrie
's Dear Brutus with the Birmingham Repertory Company, when another performer was transferred.