The Little White Bird (Or, Adventures in Kensington Gardens) - J. M. Barrie

The Scottish author J. M. Barrie's book The Little White Bird has a variety of moods, from fantasy and whimsy to social humor with dark, violent overtones. The first chapters of the novel are set in London, contemporaneous with Barrie's writing of them. They involve some brief time travel and other fantastical aspects while remaining in the London setting. All perambulators lead to Kensington Gardens is how the renowned London park is presented in the middle chapters, which ultimately became Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. Particularly after "Lock-Out Time," which Barrie describes as 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 can move about more freely than during the daylight when they must hide from ordinary people, the Kensington Gardens chapters include detailed descriptions of the features of the Gardens as well as fantasy names given to the locations by the story's characters. Following the chapters about Kensington Gardens, the third half of the book is once more mostly set in London, but there are a few brief visits to the Gardens that are not related to the Peter Pan story.