Peter Pan , by J.M. Barrie , is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics   series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics : New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars - Biographies of the authors - Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events - Footnotes and endnotes - Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work - Comments by other famous authors - Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations - Bibliographies for further reading - Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.   Peter Pan first flew across a London stage in 1904, overwhelming audiences with its tale of a magical boy who never grows up, who lures young Wendy and her brothers to Neverland where they meet pirates, Indians, fairies, and the Lost Boys. Following the play’s astonishing success, J. M. Barrie revised and expanded the story and published it as this novel, originally titled Peter and Wendy when it appeared in 1911. For children, it remains a marvelous mix of fantasy and adventure, featuring unique, imaginative characters, who frisk and frolic in an enchanting land. For adults, the story of Peter and the Lost Boys works on a much deeper level, speaking to them about the inevitable loss of childhood and the ability “to fly.” The climactic duel between the “proud and insolent youth” (Peter Pan) and the “dark and sinister man” (Captain Hook) is both a swashbuckling romp and a moving metaphor for the complex, poignant struggle between innocent but irresponsible youth and tainted but dependable maturity. Neither side wins, for the one inevitably becomes the other. Of course, the ageless Peter Pan is the happy exception.  Amy Billone teaches at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Princeton University, where she wrote her dissertation on women’s involvement with the nineteenth-century sonnet. From Amy Billone’s Introduction to Peter Pan   Unlike characters in most other children’s literature, Peter Pan has achieved mythological status. Even though many people have not read Barrie’s novel or play, Peter Pan is now as well known as Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. Why is Peter Pan such a memorable drama? The story may be so compelling partly because of its attentiveness to reversibility. Childhood and adulthood, birth and death, boys and girls, dreams and waking life all persistently change places in the story. But they change places in such a way that they reinforce rather than dismantle the oppositions that confuse and distress us. Children do become adults; birth leads to death; boys and girls cannot effortlessly change roles; dreams remain distinct from waking life. Time moves ferociously forward. Even though Peter Pan is the story of a boy who never grows older, the narrative proves that everyone else must age. The first sentence of the novel tells us so: “All children, except one, grow up.” While the legend tempts us with achingly desirable unions, it is about the difficulty (if not the impossibility) of fusing disparate worlds: life and death, dreams and reality, masculinity and femininity, childhood and adulthood. Through lively comedy, Peter Pan   brilliantly masks the underlying sadness that threatens to pull the story apart. The heartbreaking undercurrents in Peter Pan become evident when we consider the mirroring between fantasy and reality that took place in J. M. Barrie’s life. Like Peter Pan, Barrie remained a ghostly outsider. He wanted children of his own but instead found himself staring in at the Llewelyn Davies family, with whom he shared no blood relationship. Peter Pan convinces the Darling children to fly away with him in an attempt to take them from their parents and make them his; Barrie inadvertently achieved the same result with the Davies boys. In 1907 Arthur Llewelyn Davies, their father, died of cancer of the jaw. In 1909 James and Mary Barrie were divorced because of her affair with Gilbert Cannan. And in 1910 Sylvia Llewelyn Davies died of cancer. Barrie was left with five boys—age seven to seventeen—all of whom were now orphans left to his care. What was J. M. Barrie’s relationship with the Davies brothers? There are certainly passages in some of Barrie’s novels that read, a century after their publication, as suspiciously attentive to the attractiveness of little boys. Barrie’s in