James Matthew Barrie was a Scottish novelist and playwright. He was born in Scotland in 1860, where he studied and spent a good part of his adult life as a journalist. Barrie always knew he wanted to be an author, but his parents wanted him to take up a more “respectable” profession. People thought of him as a witty and whimsical writer, for even though he was excellent at writing humor, there was seriousness, and often sadness, in his work. Barrie lost his older brother David at a very young age and turned to literature for comfort. The loss of innocence and onset of grief during childhood is perhaps what inspired him to write Peter Pan.