Barrie, JAMES MATTHEW

Barrie, JAMES MATTHEW, humorist, was born 9th May 1860, at Kirriemuir, in Forfarshire, and educated there and at Dumfries Academy and Edinburgh University. After some practice as a journalist in Nottingham, he settled in London, and became a regular contributor to the St James's Gazette, the British Weekly (under the pseudonym of 'Gavin Ogilvy'), the National Observer, the Speaker, &c. His first volume, Better Dead (1887), was largely a satire on London life; in Auld Licht Idylls (1888) he opened a new and rich vein, the humour and the pathos of a typical Scottish village; 'Thrums,' his native village, still furnishes the keynote to When a Man's Single (1888), nominally a tale of literary life in London; and still more to A Window in Thrums (1889). By these three works he was rapidly raised to a front place in contemporary literature. An Edinburgh Eleven (1888) contains sketches of Professors Masson and Blackie, Lord Rosebery, and others, and was followed by the slight and sportive My Lady Nicotine (1890). The Little Minister (1891), his first lengthy story, appeared first as a serial in Good Words, and showed his characteristic excellences—grim humour, pathos, power of character-sketching and nature-description, and the gift of veracious and vivacious dialogue, but was fantastic and less true to nature than his shorter tales and sketches. Walker, London, a farcical comedy, had a prodigious run at Toole's Theatre in 1892; Jane Annie (1893) was written along with Conan Doyle. In 1894, after a severe illness, he married a lady who acted in his comedy; and the same year The Professor's Love Story was produced on the stage. Sentimental Tommy appeared first in Scribner's in 1896, and was followed by a second part in 1899. Margaret Ogilvy (1896) was a biography of his own mother, and was read with as much interest as the novels. The Little Minister was dramatised in 1897, and before the end of 1898 had brought the novelist-dramatist over £40,000.