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The engaging essays in Second Star to the Right approach Peter Pan from literary, dramatic, film, television, and sociological perspectives and, in the process, analyze his emergence and preservation in the cultural imagination.

This book is a literary analysis of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan in all its different versions -- key rewritings, dramatisations, prequels, and sequels -- and includes a synthesis of the main critical interpretations of the text over its history. A comprehensive and intelligent study of the Peter Pan phenomenon, this study discusses the book's complicated textual history, exploring its origins in the Harlequinade theatrical tradition and British pantomime in the nineteenth century. Stirling investigates potential textual and extra-textual sources for Peter Pan, the critical tendency to seek sources in Barrie's own biography, and the proliferation of prequels and sequels aiming to explain, contextualize, or close off, Barrie's exploration of the imagination. The sources considered include Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson's Starcatchers trilogy, Régis Loisel's six-part Peter Pan graphic novel in French (1990-2004), Andrew Birkin's The Lost Boys series, the films Hook (1991), Peter Pan (2003) and Finding Neverland (2004), and Geraldine McCaughrean's \"official sequel\" Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006), among others.

J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) remains best known as the creator of Peter Pan (1904), celebrated as a whimsical eccentric who wrote sad stories about lost children. In his own day, however, he was respected as Scotland’s leading dramatist and a trenchant social critic. His writings from the years following the First World War are much darker in tone than his earlier work, as a series of intense personal bereavements shook his aesthetic embrace of Christian Humanism. God exists in Barrie’s post-war works as the presence of absence, a vacancy where the divine ought to be but where an inexplicable experience of bereavement hangs instead. This paper considers the nature of God’s absence in two of Barrie’s major post-war works, the drama Mary Rose (1920) and the lecture Courage (1922), through the interrelated images of the crucified body of Christ and the absent λόγος.

As a social construct, the view towards childhood remains to change over time. Literary works, such as films or novels from different periods of time which feature children's characters as the protagonists can be the right medium to identify those shifts. This article analyzes Wendy (2020) film as the latest adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s classic children's novel Peter Pan (1911). This film has made some transformations from the original novel to make the story more relevant in today’s context, including how it showcases childhood that is experienced by the children’s characters. Using textual and comparative analysis, this study attempts to see the transformations in the film adaptation and how it shows a different childhood construction from the one appearing in the source novel. Referring to the concept of postmodern childhood, Linda Hutcheon’s adaptation theory, and Bordwell and Thompson’s elements of film analysis, this study reveals how Wendy (2020) has exemplified the concept of postmodern childhood through the portrayal of children’s roles, children’s agency, and children-adults relationship.  

[Peter Pan] is undoubtedly one of the greatest plays of the past century. Even Peter Llewellyn Davies, the second son of the young family of five boys that Barrie befriended, and a man with more cause than most to loathe Peter Pan, called it \"that terrible masterpiece\". Llewellyn Davies was teased and haunted all his life for being the original model for Peter Pan; at the age of 63, he threw himself under a train at London's Sloane Square station. Although it seems unimaginable now, the tale of Peter Pan didn't begin as a narrative for children. The character first appears in Barrie's 1902 novel for adults, The Little White Bird, an account of the interest taken in a small boy called David by a wealthy childless writer, who takes the child for walks in Kensington Gardens and tells him stories about a character called Peter Pan. David was the name of Barrie's elder brother, who died in a skating accident aged 13 and so became trapped in eternal youth. Barrie tried hard to replace David in his devastated mother's affections, even going as far as wearing his dead brother's clothes. Perhaps, though, Peter Pan endures because of the central figure of Peter himself, the boy who refuses to grow up. He made Edwardian men cheer, but in an age where youth is prized, adolescence officially lasts until the age of 35, children grow up but refuse to leave home, and regular botox injections and plastic surgery can leave you with a face as smooth as a baby's, the notion of eternal youth now appeals to both sexes. Yet that is an appalling idea. At best, a child who never grows up is - like David Barrie or the fourth Llewellyn Davies child, Michael, who drowned aged 21 in what was believed to be a suicide pact with his best friend - a dead child. At worst, he or she is frozen, unable to achieve independence and lose either their sexual or emotional virginity. \"No one must ever touch me,\" declares Peter, surely one of the most tragic statements in the whole of English drama. Adults often respond to Peter Pan as being about their own loss of innocence, when in fact it is about its deliberate retention. That is infinitely more twisted and sad.

About five years ago, when someone inquired about [Barrie]'s connection with the name's origin, [Wendy Russ] delved into genealogical records. She believes that there were people named Wendy living in Europe before Barrie's \"[Peter Pan].\" She learned about the name's origin and its \"Peter Pan\" connection about 10 years ago, she says. \"I thought that was fascinating.\" Since then, she has formed a special bond with Barrie's character. \"My ears definitely perk up when I hear the story 'Peter Pan,' \" the singer says. A few years ago, she bought a painting from a children's store depicting Peter Pan flying in the air and Wendy below, talking to him. \"I thought [their relationship] was very sweet.\" THE ART NUN: TV's Sister [Wendy Beckett] at LACMA.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Rick Meyer Los Angeles Times; THE FAST-FOOD: The chain sells many burgers.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Gordon Wilson; THE DANCER: [Wendy Whelan] of New York City Ballet.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Paul Kolnik New York City Ballet; THE SINGER: Her dad, [Brian Wilson], loved the name.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Henny Ray Abrams AFP; THE DARLING: Peter Pan encourages Wendy to fly in Disney's 1953 version of the tale that popularized the name.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Walt Disney Productions

There have been many versions of \"[Peter Pan],\" several by the author, a successful novelist and playwright. But the most widely known is the play, which Barrie wrote in a two-week burst of inspiration in 1902. Triumphantly produced in London in 1904, \"Peter Pan\" was instantly vacuumed into the Anglo-American psyche. There has been a silent film (1924), a radio play (1936), an animated film by Disney (1953), and a musical play (1954) that was later televised and several movie \"sequels\" (\"Hook\" and \"Return to Never Land\"). \"Peter Pan\" the work is as timeless as Peter Pan the character because Barrie wisely avoided a further ex- ploration of the pros and cons of growing up. Although Barrie and [Wendy] and today's filmmakers felt the same pang in leav- ing Peter eternally on the other side of the win- dow, that is where we and our children and our children's chil- dren need him, ever ready to teach us to fly and to guide us to the second star on the right. FROM DISNEY: Peter and Wendy in the cheery 1953 animated version.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Walt Disney Productions; 2002: \"Return to Never Land\" was a return to animation as well.; PHOTOGRAPHER: DreamWorks; '[Hook]': [Dustin Hoffman], left, as Hook, Robin Williams as Peter.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Murray Close; SMALL SCREEN: [Mary Martin] soars in a live television production.; PHOTOGRAPHER: NBC; NOW IN RELEASE: [Jeremy Sumpter] is Peter in P.J. [Hogan]'s film.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Universal Studios; SILENT ERA: Peter Pan often has been played by a female; here it's Betty Bronson in a 1924 film.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Robert S. Birchard Collection; Playwright-novelist J.M. Barrie's play was staged in London in 1904.; PHOTOGRAPHER: Wide World Photo

Single himself by now (his marriage had never been consummated, and his wife had left him for a younger man), Barrie stepped into the breach, providing a home for the boys and treating them to everything, including lavish vacations and the finest education.

According to Dudgeon, he then grew obsessed with du Maurier and his children, and in due course came to mesmerize and manipulate two generations of the family. [...] he inveigled his way into the good graces of George du Maurier's daughter Sylvia and her lawyer husband, Arthur Llewelyn Davies, then he gradually captivated Sylvia's spirit so fully that she would choose to spend her Christmas holidays with him rather than with her husband.