The Strand Magazine in Michigan will publish a lost gem by Peter Pan playwright J.M. Barrie in their summer issue August 4.
The play, titled The Reconstruction of the Crime, was hiding at the Ransom Library for decades until The Strand located it and had it transcribed. The magazine shared the play with many Barrie scholars who confirmed they’ve never heard of it.
Contrary to the play's title, the bedroom farce doesn’t contain a crime but is rather a spoof of crime novels. Like Peter Pan, the characters in the play involve the audience; the victim is speaking to the spectators and involves them in finding the guilty party.
Experts suspect the play was written between 1912 and 1919; it is unclear why Barrie never published or released it.
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