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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, Peter Pan, 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.
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.
The novel says that the Neverlands are compact enough that adventures are never far between, and that a map of a child's mind would resemble a map of Neverland, with no boundaries at all. Accordingly, Barrie explains that the Neverlands are found in the minds of children; although each is always more or less an island as well as having a family resemblance, they are not the same from one child to the next. For example, John Darling's Neverland had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it, while his little brother Michael's had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it.
The exact situation of Neverland is ambiguous and vague. In Barrie's original tale, the name for the real world is the Mainland, which suggests Neverland is a small island, reached by flight. Peter -who is described as saying anything that came into his head- tells Wendy the way to Neverland is second to the right, and straight on till morning. In the novel, the children are said to have found the island only because it was out looking for them. Barrie additionally writes that Neverland is near the stars of the milky way and it is reached always at the time of sunrise.
In Barrie's Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), a proto-version of Neverland, located in the Serpentine in Kensington Gardens, is called the Birds' Island, where baby Peter reaches by flight, or by sailing in a paper boat or thrush's nest.
Walt Disney's 1953 Peter Pan adds a star to Peter's directions: second star to the right, and straight on till morning. From afar, these stars depict Neverland in the distance.
The 2003 live-action film repeats this representation, as the Darling children are flown through the Solar System to reach Neverland.
In the 1991 film Hook, Neverland is shown to be located in the same way as the 1953 Disney film. While flying is the only way to reach it, the film does not show exactly how Captain Hook manages to get from Neverland to London in order to kidnap Peter's children, Jack and Maggie.
In Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006), by Geraldine McCaughrean, Neverland is located in waters known as the Sea of One Thousand Islands. The children get to the island by flying on a road called the High Way.
In Peter David's 2009 novel Tigerheart, Neverland is renamed the Anyplace and is described as being both a physical place and a dream land where human adults and children go when they dream. Additionally, there is a location called the Noplace which is cold and devoid of colour where people in a coma and those who are lost live.
In the 2011 miniseries Neverland, inspired by Barrie's works, the titular place is said to be another planet existing at the centre of the universe. It is accessible only via a magic portal generated by a strange sphere.
In the 2015 American film Pan, Neverland is a floating island in a sky-like dimension.
The passage of time in Neverland is similarly ambiguous. The novel Peter and Wendy mentions that in Neverland there are many more suns and moons than on the Mainland, making time difficult to track. One way to tell the time is to find the crocodile, and wait until the clock inside it strikes the hour. Although Neverland is widely thought of as a place where children don't grow up, it is made clear in Peter and Wendy that Lost Boys can grow up and are vaguely thinned out as punishment for doing so. Peter also explains to Wendy that fairies have short lifespans, another temporal confusion.
In Peter Pan in Scarlet (2006), by Geraldine McCaughrean, time freezes as soon as the children arrive in Neverland.
In the 2011 miniseries Neverland, in which Neverland is said to be another planet entirely, time has frozen due to external cosmic forces converging on the planet, preventing anyone living there from ageing.
More information: The Christian Imagination
and time is never planned.
Just think of happy things,
and your heart will fly on wings,
forever, in Never Never Land!
James M. Barrie
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