Peter Pan in Kensington gardens illustrated by Arthur Rackham

These beautiful illustrations come from the 1918 edition of "Peter Pan In Kensington Gardens" by J. M. Barrie with drawings by Arthur Rackham. This edition's copyright has expired and can now be read and even downloaded online here.

Peter Pan first appeared in the book "The Little White Bird" which was written in 1902, it a was a book written for adults. Peter Pan was only a character in that book that J.M. Barrie decided to expand first for a play which he wrote soon after and later on for a children book first published in 1906 called" Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens". In 1911 Barrie made a novel from the play called "Peter and Wendy".

In these illustrations, among the first images ever of the novel,  Peter Pan is represented as a toddler far different from the Disney's vision of a boy in his early teens. In reality J.M Barrie never gave Peter Pan a precise age as he never really described him in his books. Therefore Peter Pan's age and appearance are open to interpretation. Interestingly J.M.Barrie himself commissioned a statue of Peter Pan in 1912 was supposed to based on photographs of Michael Llewelyn Davies when he was six years old but the sculptor apparently used another child as model. The statue is still in Kensington Gardens these days and very well known and possibly gives us an idea of what Peter Pan should look like.

The photo above is in Public domain and can be found on Wikimedia Commons.

J.M. Barrie had befriended the Llewelyn Davies family, at least two of the five boys inspired him to write Peter Pan. When their parents died within a few years of each other both of cancer, J.M. Barrie became one of the guardians of the five boys. Michael Llewelyn Davies drowned in Oxford at died aged 21.