Monatsarchive: März 2018

Tommy and Grizel – James M. Barrie

A novel to be liked, or resented, as you will, but not to be ignored. When “Sentimental Tommy” closed with two remarkable children just entering upon maturity, this sequel was foreshadowed. The scenes are in London and in Thrums; but the most critical incident happens on the Continent. The pith of it is the interior life of emotion in two characters, — a woman with the straightforward, independent spirit of a man, but with a genius for loving, and a chameleon-like man. This emotional relationship implies tragedy. But sweeter tragedy has seldom been written. Mr. Barrie’s satisfying style and delicate humor throw rosy gleams even in the darkest places of the story.

Tommy

Sentimental Tommy – James M. Barrie

To turn from George Elliot’s Tom Tulliver to Sentimental Tommy is to encounter the maladies of the soul. It is to leave the firm and solid ground of ordinary boyhood for the quicksands of a character that is almost feminine in its subtlety, hard to understand, and harder still to love. Tommy, in his shifting moods, his substitution of feeling for principle, his delight in his own exceeding cleverness, is at times more girl than boy. Even his kindness of heart, his gentleness, his constitutional disregard of truth, his supreme emotionalism, his desire to be masterful, not by riding roughly and gayly through life, but by holding and handling and hurting the hearts of … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

My best Plays – James M. Barrie

James M. Barrie was not only the creator of Peter Pan and the other famous characters of that story. He was also a brilliant dramatist and the best of his theatre works are represented in this edition.

Contents:

The Admirable Crichton
Quality Street
What Every Woman Knows
Dear Brutus
Alice Sit-By-The-Fire

My best Plays

My best Plays.

ISBN: 9783849672836.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

J. M. Barrie’s literary career (from Wikipedia):

Barrie knew that he wished to follow a career as an author. However, his family attempted to persuade him to choose a profession such as the ministry. With advice from Alexander, he was able to work out a compromise: he … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens – James M. Barrie

J. M. Barrie tells the first adventures of Peter Pan in the form of a fairy story, settles the first questions of children in regard to their advent into the world, by picturing a pre-existence on an island in fairyland. Barrie’s observation of life is so thoroughly that of the artist that there is about ten times as much imagery in the book as in the average child’s story

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens.

ISBN: 9783849672829.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

Plot summary of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (from Wikipedia):

Peter is a seven-day-old infant who, “like all infants”, used to be part … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) – James M. Barrie

This book J. M. Barrie was to the last generation what “Alice in Wonderland” was to the one before. Written with all that indescribable charm that has endeared him to thousands, it tells the story of how Wendy and her brothers flew to the “Never Never Land” with a boy who never grew up; of the adventures that there befell with wolves and redskins and pirates; of the building of Wendy’s house, and the delight of the little boys who now had a mother at last. In short, it is the narrative of the play “Peter Pan” with its peculiar fascination heightened by new fantasies and containing much that no play … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

My Lady Nicotine – James M. Barrie

My Lady Nicotine “—a book that suggests but is very unlike ” The Reveries of a Bachelor.” The former is urban : the latter is provincial. A briar pipe filled with Arcadia Mixture starts the reveries in the one ; a hearth fire, in the other. The five bachelors in ” My Lady Nicotine ” seem to be utterly dissimilar in tastes and feelings—and have only one bond of union, their common love for the famous Arcadia Mixture. The solemnity with which they treat their pipes; their assured superiority to everybody outside of the circle which knows and appreciates that mysterious brand of tobacco ; the sentimental selfishness of their bachelor existence, and … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Margaret Ogilvy – James M. Barrie

Margaret Ogilvy is a book which it is almost sacrilegious to criticise. It takes us into a region where there is no longer any relation but the common tie of humanity between author and reader. Yet just because it is so inaccessible to ordinary comment, it is easy to place the volume. It stands unmatched in literature as an idyll of the divinest of human feelings—a mother‘s love. It pictures one of those rare lives at once so transparent and so deep that they may endure any scrutiny. It lifts the veil from a family interior where faith, purity, and tenderness are native to the daily life, and as it is in the highest … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

The Little Minister – James M. Barrie

The “Little Minister” is a light comedy, filled with a delicate romance and brightened with the humors of Thrums. It is a light comedy, despite the ambitious strain of the love passages, and the entertainment it affords is, on the whole, an exercise of one’s sentiments, not one’s intellect. The “Little Minister” is a book in which much that happens has no better reason for happening than that the author wishes it to. When we read the story in an idle hour we do not quibble at it for abandoning logic and pleasing us, without regarding the rules of the game. But such shortcomings constitute the difference between a pleasant book and a … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Echoes of the War – James M. Barrie

It is a common tribute to Sir Barrie that he is whimsical. We might repeat that tribute when speaking of this volume, Echoes of the War, but hasten to add that this time it is not the same kind as that which delights us so in “A Kiss for Cinderella” or “Peter Pan.” There is less froth and more substance, though this does not imply by any means that the lightness of touch is not there. The four one act plays contained in this book are of the war, but not about the war, for their interest centers not in those who go, but in those whose dear ones go. Mingled with … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...

Better Dead – James M. Barrie

Better dead than to lead the life of the young college graduate, Andrew Riach, who came to London penniless from a Scotch country parish, and endured all things before giving up and going home to marry a girl who chilled his enthusiasm by her ineffectual struggles with arithmetic and social problems.

Better Dead

Better Dead.

ISBN: 9783849672768.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

J. M. Barrie’s literary career (from Wikipedia):

Barrie knew that he wished to follow a career as an author. However, his family attempted to persuade him to choose a profession such as the ministry. With advice from Alexander, he was able to work out a compromise: he would attend a … Read more.../Mehr lesen ...