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    Better Dead
    Better Dead
    Better Dead
    Ebook65 pages1 hour

    Better Dead

    By James Matthew Barrie

    ()

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    About this ebook

    This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft. Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information.

    This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon’s whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that. This, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces. Join us for the journey.

    J.M. BARRIE – AN INTRODUCTION

    Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM, was born in Kirriemuir, Angus on 9th May, 1860.

    Barrie knew from an early age that he wished to be an author. His family wished otherwise. The compromise was that he would attend university to study literature at the University of Edinburgh. He graduated with an M.A. in April, 1882.

    His first job was as a staff journalist for the Nottingham Journal. The London editor of the St. James's Gazette "liked that Scotch thing" in Barrie’s work and he wrote several stories for them and later several novels based on his mother’s early life.

    Barrie though was increasingly drawn to working in the theatre. His first plays achieved little attention but in 1901 and 1902, Barrie had back-to-back theatre successes with Quality Street and The Admirable Crichton.

    The character of ‘Peter Pan’ first appeared in The Little White Bird in 1902. This most famous and enduring of his works; Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up had its first stage performance on December 27th, 1904.

    Peter Pan would overshadow all his other works. But his short stories cannot be overlooked. Indeed, from today’s vantage point they are excellent gems of social manners, of class and the way characters, sometimes in the most mundane of circumstances, react in the most surprising of ways.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMiniature Masterpieces
    Release dateMar 12, 2018
    ISBN9781787378704
    Better Dead
    Author

    James Matthew Barrie

    J.M. Barrie, the son of a weaver, was born near Dundee, Scotland, in 1860. He was a journalist and novelist and began writing for the stage in 1892. Peter Pan, first produced in London on December 27, 1904, was an immediate success. The story of Peter Pan first appeared in book form (titled Peter and Wendy, and later Peter Pan and Wendy) in 1911. Barrie died in 1937, bequeathing the copyright of Peter Pan to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, a hospital for children.

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      Book preview

      Better Dead - James Matthew Barrie

      This comes to you courtesy of Miniature Masterpieces who have an excellent range of quality short stories from the masters of the craft.  Do search for Miniature Masterpieces at any digital store for further information. 

      This audiobook is also duplicated in print as an ebook. Same title, same words. Perhaps a different experience but with Amazon’s whispersync you can pick up and put down on any device. Start on audio, continue in print and any which way after that.  This, and these are, Miniature Masterpieces.  Join us for the journey.

      J.M. BARRIE – AN INTRODUCTION

       Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM, was born in Kirriemuir, Angus on 9th May, 1860.

      Barrie knew from an early age that he wished to be an author. His family wished otherwise. The compromise was that he would attend university to study literature at the University of Edinburgh. He graduated with an M.A. in April, 1882.

      His first job was as a staff journalist for the Nottingham Journal. The London editor of the St. James's Gazette liked that Scotch thing in Barrie’s work and he wrote several stories for them and later several novels based on his mother’s early life.

      Barrie though was increasingly drawn to working in the theatre.  His first plays achieved little attention but in 1901 and 1902, Barrie had back-to-back theatre successes with Quality Street and The Admirable Crichton.

      The character of ‘Peter Pan’ first appeared in The Little White Bird in 1902. This most famous and enduring of his works; Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up had its first stage performance on December 27th, 1904.

      Peter Pan would overshadow all his other works.  But his short stories cannot be overlooked.  Indeed, from today’s vantage point they are excellent gems of social manners, of class and the way characters, sometimes in the most mundane of circumstances, react in the most surprising of ways.

      BETTER DEAD BY J.M. BARRIE

      INTRODUCTION

      This is the only American edition of my books produced with my sanction, and I have special reasons for thanking Messrs. Scribner for its publication; they let it be seen, by this edition, what are my books, for I know not how many volumes purporting to be by me, are in circulation in America which are no books of mine. I have seen several of these, bearing such titles as Two of Them, An Auld Licht Manse, A Tillyloss Scandal, and some of them announce themselves as author's editions, or published by arrangement with the author. They consist of scraps collected and published without my knowledge, and I entirely disown them. I have written no books save those that appear in this edition.

      I am asked to write a few lines on the front page of each of these volumes, to say something, as I take it, about how they came into being. Well, they were written mainly to please one woman who is now dead, but as I am writing a little book about my mother I shall say no more of her here.

      Many of the chapters in Auld Licht Idylls first appeared in a different form in the St. James's Gazette, and there is little doubt that they would never have appeared anywhere but for the encouragement given to me by the editor of that paper. It was pressure from him that induced me to write a second Idyll and a third after I thought the first completed the picture, he set me thinking seriously of these people, and though he knew nothing of them himself, may be said to have led me back to them. It seems odd, and yet I am not the first nor the fiftieth who has left Thrums at sunrise to seek the life-work that was all the time awaiting him at home. And we seldom sally forth a second time. I had always meant to be a novelist, but London, I thought, was the quarry.

      For long I had an uneasy feeling that no one save the editor read my contributions, for I was leading a lonely life in London, and not another editor could I find in the land willing to print the Scotch dialect. The magazines, Scotch and English, would have nothing to say to me—I think I tried them all with The Courting of T'nowhead's Bell, but it never found shelter until it got within book-covers. In time, however, I found another paper, the British Weekly, with an editor as bold as my first (or shall we say he suffered from the same infirmity?). He revived my drooping hopes, and I was again able to turn to the only kind of literary work I now seemed to have much interest in. He let me sign my articles, which was a big step for me and led to my having requests for work from elsewhere, but always the invitations said not Scotch—the public will not read dialect. By this time I had put together from these two sources and from my drawerful of rejected stories this book of Auld Licht Idylls, and in its collected form it again went the rounds. I offered it to certain firms as a gift, but they would not have it even at that. And then, on a day came actually an offer for it from Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton. For this, and for many another kindness, I had the editor of the British Weekly to thank. Thus the

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