Neverland

Neverland
Peter and Wendy location
Peter Pan playing the pipes, with Neverland in the background (illustration by F. D. Bedford, Peter and Wendy), 1911
First appearance	Peter Pan or the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up (1904)
Created by	J. M. Barrie
Genre	Children's fantasy
In-universe information
Other name(s)	Never Never Land
Type	Fictional island
Locations	Neverwood, Mermaids' Lagoon, Marooners' Rock
Characters	Peter Pan, Captain Hook, Tinker Bell, Tiger Lily
Population	Lost Boys, Pirates, Fairies, Native Americans, Mermaids

Neverland is a fictional island featured in the works of J. M. Barrie and those based on them. It is an imaginary faraway place where Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Captain Hook, the Lost Boys, and some other imaginary beings and creatures live.

Although not all people who come to Neverland cease to age, its best-known resident famously refused to grow up. Thus, the term is often used as a metaphor for eternal childhood (and childishness), as well as immortality and escapism.

The concept was first introduced as "the Never Never Land" in Barrie's West End theatre play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, first staged in 1904. In the earliest drafts of the play, the island was called "Peter's Never Never Never Land", a name possibly influenced by the 'Never Never', a contemporary term for outback Australia. In the 1928 published version of the play's script, the name was shortened to "the Never Land". Although the caption to one of F. D. Bedford's illustrations also calls it "The Never Never Land", Barrie's 1911 novelisation Peter and Wendy simply refers to it as "the Neverland," and its many variations "the Neverlands."^[1]

Neverland has been featured prominently in subsequent works that either adapted Barrie's works or expanded upon them. These Neverlands sometimes vary in nature from the original.