the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Bible Encyclopedias
James Matthew Barrie
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or Found more success, however, in The Professor's Love-Story in 1895; and in 1897 the popularity of his dramatized version of The Little Minister probably confirmed him in a predilection for drama, evident already in some of his first sketches in the Nottingham Journal. In 1900 Mr Bourchier produced The Wedding Guest, which was printed as a supplement to the Fortnightly Review in December of the same year. After the publication of The Little White Bird, Mr Barrie burst upon the town as a popular and prolific playwright. The struggling journalist of the early 'nineties had now become one of the most prosperous literary men of the day. In 1903 no fewer than three plays from his hand held the stage - Quality Street, The Admirable Crichton and Little Mary. The year 190 4 produced Peter Pan, a kind of poetical pantomime, in which the author found scope for some of his most characteristic and permanently delightful gifts. In 1905 Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire and in 1908 What Every W omanKnows were added to the list. As dramatist Mr Barrie brought, to a sphere rather ridden by convention, a method wholly unconventional and a singularly fresh fancy, seasoned by a shrewd touch of satirical humour; and in Peter Pan he proved himself a Hans Andersen of the stage. In literature, the success of "Thrums" produced a crop of imitations, christened in derision by W. E. Henley the "Kailyard School," though the imitations were by no means confined to Scotland. In this school the Auld Licht Idylls and A Window in Thrums remained unsurpassed and unapproached. The Scots village tale was no novelty in literature - witness John Galt, the Chronicles of Carlingford and George MacDonald. Yet Mr Barrie, in spite of a dialect not easy to the Southron, contrived to touch a more intimate and more responsive chord. With the simplest materials he achieved an almost unendurable pathos, which yet is never forced; and the pathos is salted with humour, while about the moving homeliness of his humanity play the gleams of a whimsical wit. Stevenson, in a letter to Mr Henry James, in December 1892, said justly of Barrie that "there was genius in him, but there was a journalist on his elbow." This genius found its most perfect and characteristic expression in the humanity of "Thrums" and the bizarre and tender fantasy of Peter Pan. See also J. M. Barrie and His Books, by J. A. Hamerton (Horace Marshall, 1902); and for bibliography up to May 1903, English Illustrated Magazine, vol. xxix. (N.S.), p. 208. (W. P. J.)
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'James Matthew Barrie'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/j/james-matthew-barrie.html. 1910.
