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.
The Washington Post published a strange and hilariously wrong bulletin heralding DB
's apparently non-existent pretensions to writing plays, and her equally non-existent engagement to J. M. Barrie
.
“J. M. Barrie to Wed Again: Daughter of Lord Esher Said to be Be-trothed to Novelist”. The Washington Post, p. 4.
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothy Brett
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
Intertextuality and Influence
Beryl Bainbridge
An Awfully Big Adventure is set in 1950. Its title is the phrase which J. M. Barrie
's Peter Pan uses about death. Its protagonist, Stella, works for a Liverpool repertory company as BB
had...
Textual Production
Beryl Bainbridge
In 2003 BB
was at work on a detective novel currently titled Dear Brutus (a title borrowed from J. M. Barrie
, replacing the earlier The Might Have Been) and set in the 1970s...
Textual Production
Lady Cynthia Asquith
LCA
's next book, Portrait of Barrie, blended two genres she had previously written, biography and personal memoir, in an account of her years as an employee of the famous playwright.
Cookman, Anthony Victor. “The Barrie Legend”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 2758, p. 791.
791
Residence
Lady Cynthia Asquith
Though Clouds was rich in memories for LCA
, she actually grew up in Stanway House, north-east of Winchcombe in Gloucestershire. This was, she wrote, my very own home—the core of the world so...
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...
Travel
Lady Cynthia Asquith
From 1921 onwards, she and her children spent every August in possession of Stanway, a holiday funded by Barrie
, who stayed with them and paid rent for them to LCA
's mother, who...
Occupation
Lady Cynthia Asquith
During the war LCA
received the last of three successive offers of significant acting roles, despite her total lack of dramatic training. Towards Christmas 1909 she had taken part in a charity production at the...
Friends, Associates
Lady Cynthia Asquith
As well as her close relationships with Angela Thirkell
and Barrie
, LCA
built a significant friendship with the novelist D. H. Lawrence
(who has been seen as drawing her portrait in The Blind Man...
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.
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...
Wealth and Poverty
Lady Cynthia Asquith
Money had became tight for LCA
and her husband (though cushioned by their wealthy and generous extended families) when he joined up in the First World War, cutting off the income from the Bar which...
Textual Production
Lady Cynthia Asquith
This article (written in two days) began a series in the Times entitled The Woman's View and signed A Correspondent. She received fifteen guineas for an article of 750 words, generally written in two...
Textual Production
Lady Cynthia Asquith
LCA
's column for the Times and her articles elsewhere led naturally to further miscellaneous work for and about children. (Evelyn Waugh
was mistaken in his unshakable belief that she was the true author...
