Microsoft Word final-current Developments at the Intersection of British Children-online-version doc

George MacDonald
(1825-1905), Scottish author, poet and minister,
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published 
works for adults and for children. He influenced British children’s fantasy with three classics: 
At the Back of the North Wind
, The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and The Princess and 
Curdie 
(1883). Like Kingsley, MacDonald was strongly influenced by the fairy tale tradition. 
His first classic children’s novel, At the Back of the North Wind, “a sentimental fantasy with 
evangelical allusions”,
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appeared in 1871. The main character Diamond’s travels with the 
North Wind and his experiences in the paradisiacal land he enters change and positively 
influence him. Embedded in a dream structure as in Alice, the novel challenges the reader to 
decide whether the boy has actually undertaken this journey or whether his adventures are due 
to feverous hallucinations. Yet, in contrast to a conventional fairy tale happy-ending, the 
protagonist dies, his longing for Paradise and salvation being too strong. Modern British 
children’s fantasy has taken to accepting such unhappy endings, thus breaking free from 
traditional fairy tale conventions of “happily ever after”. Harmony and balance are by no 
means discarded completely, but problematic endings in the style of MacDonald are 
becoming more and more frequent, mirroring the spirit of the time.
The Scottish author Sir James Matthew Barrie (1860-1937) created one of the most 
outstanding works of the Golden Age of British children’s fantasy. Among uncounted 
adaptations in the form of novels, drama and film, the 1904 London production of Peter Pan 
was “hailed almost unanimously as the finest play ever written for children, and a classic of 
imaginative literature”.
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Peter Pan made his first appearance in Barrie’s novel The Little 
White Bird
, published in 1902.
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Peter Pan proved a landmark publication in children’s 
fantasy and soon became one of its central classics. Having formed generations of children 
since its publication, Peter Pan never lost its appeal. What makes it highly attractive for 
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Clute; Grant, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 603. 
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Cullinan; Person, The Continuum Encyclopedia, p. 506. 
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Carpenter; Prichard, The Oxford Companion, p. 48. 
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From this, Barrie developed a play, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up (1904) and also adapted 
the matter for a novel, Peter and Wendy (1911).

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young readers are the exotic setting, the characters and the adventures. Peter Pan offers a 
world without responsibilities and unlimited possibilities – seemingly all the wishes of 
children come true. Restrictive parents are absent, school is unheard of, and playtime is only 
interrupted by self-imagined meals. At first glance, the ideal place to be as a child. Yet, the 
light of the unearthly paradise is dimmed by the price the children have to pay. The central 
thread running throughout the novel is a deep sense of loss; best expressed in the “Lost 
Boys”. Behind the happy façade Peter Pan is melancholic and sad. Once he has committed 
himself to his new world, he lacks the willpower to break free from it again in order to accept 
life and grow up. Instead of an active, critical confrontation with his fate he chooses a passive 
escape into an unchanging dream world. Ironically, the eternal boy shows eternal immaturity 
by being trapped in his childhood and his world.
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Barrie’s achievements lie in the creation of a unique, almost mythical secondary 
world, pieced together by combining different motifs of children’s literature favourites. 
Initially similar to Edith Nesbit’s concept, magic intrudes into the everyday life of children, 
but then guides
them into a different world. Depending on their preferences, Peter Pan’s realm 
offers various possibilities of identification for children: The genre of the adventure story is 
covered by the pirates, the Indians and the Lost Boys, the fairy tale genre by the mermaids, 
fairies and the ability to fly, embedded in the frame of domestic story. With the strong 
personalities of Hook, Peter, Tinkerbell and Wendy, Barrie has provided children’s literature 
with another set of immortal characters, firmly anchored in the minds of children and grown-
ups alike. It has become a “cultural myth”.
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