James Matthew Barrie was born in Kirriemuir, Scotland, in 1860, the ninth of ten children. He moved to London as a young journalist and became a popular novelist and playwright.

Peter Pan was born in the stories Barrie told to the Llewelyn Davies boys, whom he met in Kensington Gardens. The play opened in 1904, and in 1911 he turned it into the novel Peter and Wendy. He gave the rights to Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital for children in London. He died in 1937.