Sir James Matthew “J. M.” Barrie (May 9, 1860 – June 19, 1937) was a Scottish playwright and novelist who achieved fame as the creator of Peter Pan. Born the ninth of ten children to a conservative Calvinist family in the Angus region of Scotland, he was a voracious reader who early set on a career as an author. After graduating from the University of Edinburgh he worked as a journalist and found some success with a series of nostalgic novels about a religious sect in parochial Scotland. He was drawn to the theatre; during the production of his Ibsen’s Ghost, a parody of Ibsen, met actress Mary Ansell, who he married in 1894.  He had two successes on the stage, Quality Street (1901) and The Admirable Crichton (1902) before the huge success of Peter Pan in 1904. He continued to find success in the theatre with productions that often dwelt on social issues. He was well connected in literary England of the day, counting Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Hardy as friends and correspondents. After the World War he established an amateur cricket team for his friends; players included H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, P. G. Wodehouse, G. K. Chesterton, and A. A. Milne, to name just a few.  In 1929 he donated the British copyrights to all the Peter Pan works to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, which continue to provide support to this day.