Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden, known professionally as Maude Adams, was an American actress and stage designer who achieved her greatest success as the character Peter Pan, first playing the role in the 1905 Broadway production of Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. Adams' personality appealed to a large audience and helped her become the most successful and highest-paid performer of her day, with a yearly income of more than $1 million during her peak.
Maude Adams, 1901
Adams (left) and Flora Walsh in The Wandering Boys in San Francisco, 1880
Adams as Peter Pan
Adams and Robert Edeson in the Broadway production of The Little Minister (1897)
Peter Pan is a fictional character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie. A free-spirited and mischievous young boy who can fly and never grows up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the mythical island of Neverland as the leader of the Lost Boys, interacting with fairies, pirates, mermaids, Native Americans, and occasionally ordinary children from the world outside Neverland.
Illustration of Peter Pan playing the pipes, by F. D. Bedford from Peter and Wendy (1911)
Cover of 1915 edition of J. M. Barrie's novel, first published in 1911, illustrated by F. D. Bedford
Peter Pan, as he appears in Walt Disney's film adaptation (1953)
The Paradise of Peter Pan by Edward Mason Eggleston, 1934