Biografia

From 1928 onward all royalties from the sales of "Peter Pan" were donated to the Great Ormond Street Hospital. In 1987 (50 years after Barrie's death), when normally royalty rights would have expired, by a special act of Parliament royalties were allowed to continue going to the hospital in perpetuity. Many countries dispute the right to institute perpetual royalties, considering Peter Pan to be in the public domain, and refuse to enforce the copyright within their boundaries.

Based the character of Captain Hook on a minister in East Sussex named Rev. John Maher, who was later revealed to have been a vicious pirate and had a hook for a hand.

When he was six years old his next-older brother David, whom he knew was his mother's favorite, died two days before his 14th birthday in an ice-skating accident. This left his mother devastated, and Barrie tried to fill David's place in his mother's attentions, even wearing David's clothes and whistling in the manner that he did. Barrie's mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her. This undoubtedly influenced James' most famous character, Peter Pan.

After the death of two of Barrie's close friends, Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn-Davies, he adopted their five sons: Peter, Jack, George, Michael and Nicholas. Barrie was very close to all the boys, and was heartbroken when Michael drowned in 1921 and George was killed in battle in 1915 during World War I. Their brother, Peter Llewelyn-Davies, committed suicide on April 5, 1960.

His manager and close friend Charles Frohman was among those who died on the SS Lusitania when it was struck by a torpedo and he refused a lifeboat. When faced with his demise, he paraphrased Barrie's character Peter Pan and said, "Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure that life gives us".