James Matthew Barrie (May 9, 1860 - June 19, 1937) was a Scottish author and dramatist, the child of a family of small-town weavers, and best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. He was educated in Scotland but moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright. There he met the Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired him in writing about a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens (included in The Little White Bird), then to write Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, a fairy play about an ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland. Peter Pan quickly overshadowed his previous work, although he continued to write successfully, and it became his best-known work, credited with popularizing the name Wendy, which was very uncommon previously. Barrie unofficially adopted the Davies boys following the deaths of their parents. Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, which continues to benefit from them. He died of died of pneumonia in 1937, at the age of 77. Bain News Service, circa 1908-15.