On December 27, 1904, the Duke of York Theatre in London staged the premiere of Scottish playwright J.M. Barrie's masterpiece about Wendy and her brothers, dragged by Peter Pan into the imaginary land of "lost boys" and the fairy Tinkerbell, and pirates led by the sinister Captain Hook.

Numerous events are being held to mark the anniversary, including a special performance at the Duke of York and workshops for children on the Peter Pan theme at the Theatre Museum in London's Covent Garden.

Museum spokeswoman Caroline Malbon explained the play's enduring appeal. "It captures the children's imagination, going away from routine life to enter a magical, fantastic world, leaving the parents behind," she told AFP.

An auction of Peter Pan memorabilia, including manuscripts, at Sotheby's last week fetched 116,100 pounds (165,000 euros, 223,000 dollars).

The proceeds of the sale went to Great Ormond Street Hospital, designated in 1929 by Sir James Matthew Barrie -- to give the playwright his full name -- as the sole beneficiary of the profits from the rights to Peter Pan.

The hospital, which specializes in the treatment of sick children, receives all monies from plays, films, books and other products inspired by the story.

Under the terms of Barrie's will, the hospital is not allowed to divulge how much Peter Pan brings in.

One of the most successful pieces of children's literature of all time, the play has packed theatres around the English-language world every year since it premiered.

The boy who did not want to grow up has inspired a swathe of films, from the famous Disney cartoon version in 1953, to the most recent, released this autumn, "Finding Neverland" starring Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet, which concentrates on Barrie's own life.

The Sotheby's auction aroused great interest from universities and libraries, fascinated by the astonishing and tragic genesis of the story.

J.M. Barrie (1860-1937) was walking in London's Kensington gardens in 1897 when he bumped into a little boy, five-year-old George Llewelyn-Davies, and his four-year-old brother Jack, accompanied by their nanny and their brother Peter in a pram.

Barrie rapidly became a friend of the family, which grew in size with the birth of two more little boys, Michael and Nicholas.

The five children appear to have been the inspiration of the "lost boys" and Michael in particular the model for Peter Pan, in the same way as the friendship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell inspired that other great children's classic, "Alice in Wonderland".

But the Llewelyn-Davies family was struck by tragedy, with the death of the father and then the children's beautiful mother, Sylvia, in 1910.

"When she died, it seems that Barrie falsified her will, to become the custodian of the children, replacing the name of Jenny Hodgson, the boys' nurse, with that of his own, 'Jimmy'", Sotheby's manuscript expert Peter Beal said.

Tragedy continued to dog the family: George was killed in 1915 in World War I, Michael drowned with a friend in 1921 in a suspected suicide and Peter committed suicide in 1960.

The curse appears to have even affected Barrie's biographer Andrew Birkin. Barrie had written: "May God blast anyone who writes a biography about me". Birkin's son, a promising poet and musician, was killed in a car accident in September 2001 at the age of 21.