Born into a low-income family of weavers, J.M. Barrie had an unhappy childhood. When he was 6 years old, his older brother died. This left his family devastated and caused a grievous effect on his mother. Throughout his life Barrie wished to recapture the happy years before his mother was stricken and he retained a strong childlike quality in his adult personality. After becoming a famous writer, he would confess many times that his deepest wish had been to recover the happy years of his early childhood, and that his most famous character, Peter Pan, was an embodiment of such longings.

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After studying at the University of Edinburgh he spent two years on the Nottingham Journal working as a journalist before settling in London as a freelance writer. In 1888 he published his firts successful book, Auld Licht Idylls, and in 1889, A Window in Thurms. In 1891 The Little Minister, a highly sentimental novel in the same style, was a best seller and with Margaret Ogilvy (1896), Sentimental Tommmy (1896) and Tommy and Grizel (1900) he becomes a successful writer. 

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Barrie´s marriage in 1894 to the actress Mary Ansell was childless and apparently unconsummated. At an 1897 New Year´s Eve, he met Sylvia Llewellyn Davies and began an intense love relationship with her, a sentimental and affectionate woman, with whose children he formed an authentic family. It was to those children that he began to tell stories starring the same character: Peter Pan.

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Some of those stories were published in 1902, in a volume titled The Little white Bird. Soon after, in 1904, the comedy Peter Pan or the boy who would not grow up came to light. Later Barrie would publish Peter Pan in Kenssington Gardens (1906) and Peter and Wendy (1911).

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The success of his character and and his adventures was instantaneous. Peter Pan and his companions (little Wendy, John, Michael, Nana, the fairy Tinkerbell and the terrible Captain Hook) were adopted as heroes by many generations of children around the world, connoisseurs of their adventures through all kinds of translations and adaptations. In 1953, Walt Disney studios took the adventures to the movies.