The Annotated Peter Pan (The Centennial Edition) (The Annotated Books)

September 26, 2011
On the centennial anniversary of the publication of Peter and Wendy, editor, translator, and Harvard professor Tatar presents the novel along with a wealth of information and commentary, including an introduction outlining the story's central themes and symbols, the circumstances of Barrie writing the play Peter Pan, and its critical reception. Barrie was a peculiar, but generous man who adopted the five Llewelyn Davies boys when they were orphaned, and bequeathed the copyright for Peter Pan to a London children's hospital. Tatar has included illustrations from Peter and Wendy by F.D. Bedford, illustrations by Arthur Rackham from Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (published four years earlier), and photographs of the Llewelyn Davies boys taken by the author himself. In a dedication to the boys, Barrie wrote: "I made Peter by rubbing the five of you violently together, as savages with two sticks produce a flame." Readers of all ages will delight in the adventures of Peter and the Darling children, from Peter leaving his shadow behind in the nursery to the epic battle with Hook and his cohorts. As Tatar notes, Barrie invented a genre in which "adults and children could together inhabit a zone where all experience the pleasures of a story."

April 15, 2011

Having just seen the New York Theatre Workshop production of Peter and the Starcatcher, an adaptation of the Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson children's novel that prefigures the events in Peter Pan, I'm delighted to see that Barrie's classic is the latest in Norton's annotated fairy tale series--helmed by the redoubtable Maria Tatar, who chairs Harvard's Program in Folklore and Mythology and has edited several volumes in the series. Buy, even if you don't believe in magic.

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