The Little White Bird is a British novel by J. M. Barrie, ranging in tone from fantasy and whimsy to social comedy with dark, aggressive undertones.
The Little White Bird is a novel by British author J.M. Barrie which spans fantasy and whimsy to social commentary with dark, aggressive undertones. The book reached prominence and longevity primarily due to the introduction of a character called Peter Pan, whose chapters are written in a much more gentle tone than the rest of the book. Four years later, in 1906, these chapters were published as a book in their own right as "Peter Pan In Kensington Gardens". The Peter Pan story began as a single chapter but grew to become a "book within a book" of more than one hundred pages during the four years that Barrie worked on the book.
The Little White Bird is a series of short episodes that included both fanciful tales that were set in Kensington Gardens and accounts of the narrator's everyday activities. The story is set in several different locations within London and the Peter Pan segment is set in London's beautiful Kensington Gardens, one of the famous royal parks. The chapters include detailed descriptions of recognizable features of the Gardens and Barrie gives them fantasy names that the characters use after "Lock Out Time", his term for the time at the end of the day when the park gates are closed to the public and the fairies and other magical inhabitants of the park are able to move about more freely than they can during the daylight hours when they must hide from ordinary people.