If you've surfed here by chance and want to read a reasonably short synopsis of Barrie's 'story so far', a piece I wrote for the RSC some years ago places The Boy Castaways in context without having to wade too deeply. I would also strongly recommend reading Barrie's Dedication to Peter Pan, in which he gives his own account of "that strange and terrible summer", and sets the mood in his own inimitable style.

If you want to read more about the background to The Boy Castaways, there are extracts from Roger Lancelyn Green's Fifty Years of Peter Pan (1955) and Denis Mackail's The Story of JMB (1941)  Mackail was a contemporary of the Davies boys (his sister was in love with Jack), knew Barrie well, and his account is based on first hand-hand information from Jack and Peter. Lancelyn Green also knew Peter and Nico, but the real value of his account lies in his immense knowledge of children's literature, fairy tales and myths, allowing him to place The Boy Castaways in a literary context. I met Roger several times - a lordly (and very English) Joseph Campbell who was immensely helpful, and whose book on the history of Peter Pan is by far the best. Finally there's my own telling in J M Barrie & the Lost Boys, necessarily much shorter, and somewhat secondary since I only ever knew Nico, who, as he said himself, wasn’t even "a twinkle in mother's eye" in 1901, and could add little to the scant account in his brother Peter's Morgue.

For those curious about the photographic aspect, I've also added a few photographic notes, as well as a brief account of my own visits to Black Lake, and how to find it.  Finally, there's a three-minute short film I put together, based on spotting the surviving copy of The Boy Castaways on Barrie's bookshelf in a photo taken in 1933...

The photographs used here are taken from 7" x 5" copy negatives obtained from the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale in 1976, and I gratefully acknowledge their permission to use them . The photographs themselves are part of the Peter Pan Gift, and the copyright therefore belongs to the Great Ormond Street Hospital - see Copyright.