J. M. Barrie wrote the four-act drama What Every Woman Knows. At the Duke of York's Theatre in London, showman Charles Frohman gave it its debut performance.
Maggie Wylies, a plain young woman who they worry will stay a spinster, is the daughter of a wealthy but ignorant Scottish family. The Wylies learn one night that John Shand, a responsible young university student, has been breaking into their house to read books from their extensive collection. Shand is indigent and unable to afford to purchase the textbooks he needs for law school. Maggie Wylie and John Shand agree: if he agrees to marry her after five years, her family would pay for his schooling.
Maggie utilizes her skills and contacts to quietly work behind the scenes to help John win the election after realizing her husband's desire to become a member of parliament. She keeps advancing his career without ever letting him realize that she is the driving force behind his success. In the end, he marries Lady Sybil Lazenby, a young Englishwoman who is stunning, elegant, and well-born.
Scottish author Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, is most known for creating Peter Pan. He was also a playwright. He was raised and educated in Scotland before relocating to London, where he penned a number of well-received books and plays. There, he met the Llewelyn Davies brothers, who later served as the inspiration for his works Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, a 1904 West End "fairy play," about an ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland. The story of a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens was first included in Barrie's 1902 adult novel The Little White Bird. Despite his ongoing success as a writer, Peter Pan eclipsed all of his earlier works and is credited with making the name Wendy well-known. After the deaths of the Davies boys' parents, Barrie adopted them clandestinely. George V created Barrie a baronet on June 14, 1913, and in the New Year's Honours of 1922, he was inducted into the Order of Merit.
