The Little White Bird is a novel by J. M. Barrie, published in 1902, ranging in tone from fantasy and whimsy to social comedy with dark aggressive undertones. The book attained prominence and longevity due to several chapters written in a softer tone than the rest of the book, in which it introduced the character and mythology of Peter Pan. Those chapters were later published separately as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens as a children's book. The Peter Pan story began as one chapter of a longer work and during the four years that Barrie worked on the book prior to publication, grew to an "elaborate book-within-a-book" of over one hundred pages.
The complete book has also been published under the title The Little White Bird, or Adventures in Kensington Gardens. Project Gutenberg has digitized the full text of the book for no-cost download availability in the United States, where the book is in the public domain.
Read more about The Little White Bird: Plot Introduction, Plot Summary, Characters, Major Themes, Literary Significance and Reception, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
Famous quotes containing the words white and/or bird:
“He thought that I was after him for a feather—
The white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“but as an Eagle
His cloudless thunderbolted on thir heads.
So vertue giv’n for lost,
Deprest, and overthrown, as seem’d,
Like that self-begott’n bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
And lay e’re while a Holocaust,
From out her ashie womb now teem’d
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deem’d,
And though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird ages of lives.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)