Famous Scots

James Matthew Barrie (later Sir James Matthew Barrie) was born on 9 May 1860 at 9 Brechin Road, Kirriemuir. He was the ninth child of ten to be born to David Barrie and Margaret Ogilvy.

James was only 6 years old when his older brother David died at the age of 13. This shattered the close-knit family and was particularly devastating for James’s mother, as David was the apple of her eye. James tried to replace his late brother in his mother’s affections by dressing as him and attempting to replicate David’s special whistle. His brother’s death was to have a deep influence on Barrie’s life and work.

Even as a child, James devised and produced plays for himself and his friends, staging them in the wash-house opposite the family home. The wash-house would later become a model for the Wendy House in Peter Pan. As his mother began to recover from the grief of losing David, she began to tell James stories about her childhood as well as tales from the locality of Kirriemuir. These would feature in many of his later works.

In 1868, at the age of 8, James was sent to attend Glasgow Academy, where he stayed for three years before going to Dumfries Academy, in both places staying with his older brother Alexander, a schoolteacher, and his sister Mary. James wrote his first play while he was at Dumfries – Bandolero the Bandit, which was performed at the Dumfries Theatre Royal.

In 1878, Barrie moved to Edinburgh to attend university, where he began to write articles and reviews for local newspapers. After graduating, he accepted a post to write for the Nottingham Journal.

Barrie wrote many articles about his life in Kirriemuir and sent them to editors of London newspapers; some were published, which consequently persuaded him to move to London in 1884. Eventually these stories would find their way into his first books – Auld Licht Idylls and When a Man’s Single (both 1888), A Window in Thrums (1889) and the novel The Little Minister (1891).

As well as books, Barrie began to write for the stage. While watching a production of his third play, Walker London, James fell in love with the lead actress, Mary Ansell. They married in 1894.

In 1895, further tragedy struck the Barrie household when James’s sister Hannah Ann and his mother Margaret died. Barrie paid affectionate tribute to his mother in his work, Margaret Ogilvy (1896).

Barrie was granted several honours including being made a baronet in 1913 and being given the Order of Merit in 1922. He also became President of the Society of Authors in 1928, was made Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh in 1930 and was afforded the Freedom of his home town Kirriemuir, also in 1930. A great fan of cricket, Barrie offered to fund the building of a new pavilion for the Kirriemuir cricket team, which he officially opened in 1930.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s Barrie regularly corresponded with his childhood friend James Robb, who continued to live in Kirriemuir, and we’re very fortunate to have some of these letters in our archive collection. Much of their content revolves around past times, and mutual friends and acquaintances in Kirriemuir. Before his death, James Barrie gave the rights to Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, which continues to benefit to this day. In increasingly ill health, Barrie died of pneumonia in a London nursing home in 1937 at the age of 77. He was buried in Kirriemuir cemetery next to his parents.