J.M. Barrie

Research information on J.M. Barrie.
http://www.jmbarrie.co.uk/
All Peter Pan materials copyright Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children's Charity.


A plethora of sources, all depending on how vast the study is. Can span from research on one work, his life time, or research which envelops not only Barrie, but all of the other lives he influenced.

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, housed at Yale and thus far, still unpublished. Said to be utterly illegible at times. Birkin estimates that he translated about 2/3 of Barrie's 46 notebooks. Beyond this, they are important and untapped sources. Beinecke also houses a vast amount of Barrie papers and memorbelia which are not even catalogued, studied, or published at this time. The majority of the materials were collected by Walter Beinecke Jr., and donated to the library in the 1960s. The last update to the catalogue of the collection was in 1997, and according to the website, the entire collection is open for research.
According to Birkin, copies of the original 1975 microfilms of Barrie's notebooks can be purchased directly from the Beinecke library.
http://webtext.library.yale.edu/beinflat/general.BARRIE.HTM

"Mary Hodgson Collection" - donated by her niece to Birkin, this collection added to his research for the biography in 1977. Personally owned by Birkin (?)

"Nico Collection" - thousands of pieces, the majority being notes and letters, bought by Andrew Birkin from Nico Llewelyn-Davies before his death in 1980. As the youngest and last surviving adopted son of J.M. Barrie, Nico was a wealth of information to Birkin, and made an unequaled contribution to the memory and study of J. M. Barrie, the writer and the man. Personally owned by Birkin.

"Peter Davies Collection" - a wealth of the publisher's own papers and memorbelia about his own life, his family, and J. M. Barrie. Donated in 1992, by his son, Rivvy. Personally owned by Birkin (?)

"There’s a good deal of further “primary source material” in the form of extensive correspondence and hours of taped interviews between 1975-1980 with the (then) surviving dramatis personae of the saga: Gerrie Llewelyn Davies, Eiluned and Medina Lewis, Angela and Daphne du Maurier, Lord Boothby, Elisabeth Bergner and many others, including ten hours of audio tape with Nico himself." - Birkin's website, personally owned (?)

JMBarrie.co.uk - Birkin's personal site, with an archive of the majority of J.M. Barrie regalia from his research, and the years between then and now. A full website has been available since 2004, and Birkin continues to add to it as more becomes available.

Interesting copyright circumstances. Taken from Birkin's site - "The late Joan Ling used to run the Barrie Estate, on behalf of Barrie’s literary heirs, to works other than those embraced by the Peter Pan Gift. She - and the Asquith family - generously allowed me to quote from Barrie’s other works (including letters and notebooks) without restriction. Joan died many years ago, and the Estate was officially wound up in 1987 when Barrie’s works went out of copyright, as per the Berne Convention’s 50-years-from-author’s-death ruling (Barrie having died in 1937). But when the Convention’s ruling was extended to 70 years, Barrie (and a great many other authors/artists/composers) suddenly found their posthumous shelf-lives extended by another 20 years - in Barrie’s case, until 2007."