I loved this book. This is truly a classic book that everyone should read twice in their life, once as a child and once as an adult. ( )

Before the time of Wendy, Tinker Bell and Captain Hook, before even Never-Never Land itself, Peter Pan was an ordinary baby. All babies, having been birds before they were humans, were ‘a little wild during the first few weeks, and very itchy about the shoulders, where their wings used to be’. But, unlike other babies, Peter decided to escape and flew away over the rooftops back to Kensington Gardens. But it was by no means a simple matter for Peter to resume life as a bird and, as is pointed out to him early on by Solomon Caw, his destiny is to be a ‘Betwixt-and Between’. From being trapped on the island in the Serpentine and escaping in a boat made out of a bird’s nest, to learning the ways of the fairies – whose best trick is to pretend to be something else, usually a flower – Peter Pan’s adventures in the enchanted world of ‘the little people’ are where the legend began.

Peter Pan was created by the novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) to preserve the memory of a younger brother who had died as a child. After the phenomenal success of the stage version, in which Barrie introduced the characters and settings we know so well today, Hodder and Stoughton commissioned Arthur Rackham in 1905 to illustrate a special gift edition of the original stories. The twelve colour plates in this facsimile edition, together with the black-and-white line drawings, are among Rackham’s finest and a reminder of why the Edwardian years were the golden age of book illustration. Brilliantly capturing the landscape of the gardens, with their broad tree-lined avenues, shimmering lakes and romantic glades, Rackham fills this Arcadia with a dazzling array of fairies and spirits, who dance on spiders’ webs, argue with the birds and make mischief with the park signs.

Preface by David Wootton. Bound in buckram, blocked with Arthur Rackham’s original design redrawn by Frances Button.

This is the original short story from which all Barrie's later Peter Pan stories sprang. It is Peter's 'origin' story, beginning with his flying to Kensington Gardens when still a baby.

There are several disturbing moments in the narrative, and not just for Freudians -- I'll say no more.

Recommended if you have a basic interest in either Barrie or the Peter Pan stories.