The adventure continues

Three and a half years and 117 posts ago, this blog was born. It's now reached and passed 50,000 hits. This seems like a good time to look back at what I've found particularly interesting during my research for The Stowaway.

The five most popular posts are listed there at the right side of the page. I had no idea Mr. Smee was so popular before I started Hook's Waltz. But here are another five, with links, that I think deserve a little love as well.

By Mabel Lucie Atwell, 1921

Keeping faith
There are certain challenges of being true to a character who has been portrayed as many ways through the years as Peter has.

~ ~ ~

By Anne Graham Johnstone, 1988

Why they flew away
Why was it so easy for Peter Pan to convince the Darling children to join him in Neverland? The answer is less sinister than you might think. 

~ ~ ~

Return to Neverland Happy Meal toys.
2002?

Peter and the popular media
Movie tie-in toys have been around longer than McDonald's has.

(I wish now I had never gone searching for images of vintage Peter Pan toys. I guess there's a little more room in the display cabinet.)

~ ~ ~

Writer Maurice Hewlett. Not only did J. M
Barrie recruit him for his struggling cricke
team, he borrowed his son's name for one
of the pirates in Peter Pan.

Friends in unexpected places
James Matthew Barrie had no problem writing his friends into his stories, even if dreadful things happened to the characters.

Bonus: He also had no problem pressing them into service on perhaps the worst amateur cricket
team in history.
Sports and letters

Additional bonus:
The cricket rivalry has been resurrected!
A new sports rivalry between Authors and Actors 

~ ~ ~

By Marjorie Torrey, 1957

Of kisses and lost children 
And finally, my most personal take on the story of Peter Pan, with its expression of the indelible mark left by the death of a child.

Sports and letters

Not only did Mr. Barrie write his friends into Peter Pan as pirates who met terrible ends, he coerced them into playing on a cricket team whose ineptitude provided thirteen years of jokes.

A.E.W. Mason and Maurice Hewlitt (father of Cecco) were members of the Allahakbarries, a team formed in 1887 with a name born not only of a horrible pun but of a misapprehension ("Allah akbar" meaning "God is great," rather than "Heaven help us.") Among the players were A. A. Milne, Arthur Conan Doyle, P.G. Wodehouse, Alfred Lord Tennyson's son Charles, and George Llewelyn Davies, one of the group of boys whose make-believe games with Barrie inspired the creation of Peter. H.G. Wells and G.K. Chesterton were also invited, but declined to join.

Allahakbarries in 1913,
with J.M. Barrie, middle row, third from left

Barrie was not a skilled cricketeer, nor were most of his team members. Luckily, Conan Doyle had some notable sporting expertise, and from time to time players with greater ability were recruited

A slender volume entitled Allahakbarries C. C. was privately published by Barrie in 1890 and a revised edition in 1899. This latter was dedicated to "To Our Dear Enemy Mary de Navarro," a well-known American stage actress who formed a cricket team from Broadway artists and bowled out Barrie--evidently with great success--during a match in 1897.

More on the Barrie and celebrity cricket from the BBC.