2 h 29 minAudiobook15 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 2 h 29 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if a second chance gives you a different life, but leaves you exactly as you are?
On Midsummer Eve, an English country house fills with guests who carry private regrets. Their host, Lob, is old, puckish, and full of secrets. As his butler Matey prepares for the gathering, a strange possibility hangs over the party: a wood may appear where no wood belongs.
In J. M. Barrie's three-act play Dear Brutus, that wood offers a chance to explore lives never lived. Mr. Dearth, a painter who drinks and mourns his wasted talent, longs for something better. Around him, disappointed husbands and wives wonder whether different choices could bring happiness—or whether they carry their troubles within them.
What you’ll discover
- A host with secrets Meet Lob, whose teasing manner and strange invitations draw regretful guests toward the wood.
- A wood beyond reason Step from a country house into a midsummer mystery where familiar people become different.
- The ache of wasted gifts Follow Dearth's longing for a better life beneath his bitterness and drinking.
- Laughter with a sting Find fairy-tale wonder and grown-up sadness sharing the same stage, without easy comfort.
- Fate meets personal choice Consider whether another past could change us, or merely reveal who we already are.
Who will love it
This is for readers who love fairy-tale stage plays, witty talk, and big questions about regret and second chances. It suits anyone who enjoys Barrie's warm humour and moonlit magic.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- The light reveals flattering self portraits
- Matey blames a wrong turn
- Lob steers his guests toward mystery
- Unhappy marriages expose the guests' excuses
- The wood offers another life
- New lives carry familiar habits
- Dearth finds joy in being a father
- Changed luck tests responsibility for ourselves
- Comedy and tenderness hold the question
Who’s who
- LobA tiny, ancient host who tends his flowers lovingly and invites guests to Midsummer week, secretly hoping they will go looking for his wood.
- MateyThe butler, a thief with a good heart, who believes one different turn in life would have made him an honest man.
- Will DearthA once-gifted painter now drinking his days away, who still jokes about himself and carries the memory of the man he used to be.
- Alice DearthHis wife, dark, blunt and fierce, who once loved him wildly and now wishes she had chosen a different life.
- John PurdieA brilliant young barrister who sees himself as a lonely soul and uses fine speeches to excuse his wandering heart.
- Mabel PurdieHis gentle, observant wife, who knows exactly what her husband is doing and answers with cool, sharp wit.
- Joanna TroutA merry, quick-tongued guest who falls for a married man and wants to think herself without a flaw.
- Mr and Mrs CoadeA devoted old couple, called Coady, who are known for kindness, footstools and one unwritten book on the Feudal System.
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Dear Brutus in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Dear Brutus
by J. M. Barrie · 1922
On Midsummer Eve, a garden becomes a wood where Lob's guests meet the second chance they have longed for.
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In short
What if you could go back to the crossroads where your life took a wrong turn and walk it again? Dear Brutus begins on a Midsummer Eve in an English country house, where eight guests are about to find out.
Dear Brutus at a glance
- Reading time
- About 1 h 25 min1 h 10 min fast, 1 h 45 min slow
- Length
- 20,700 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1922by J. M. Barrie
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A dark room and a waiting garden
Barrie opens with stage directions that read like a story. The curtain rises so quietly that a mouse would not be disturbed. The two main characters, he says, are Darkness and Light. The room is dark, the garden is full of moonlight, and the two sit still, like old enemies about to come to grips.
Then a party of guests steps into the dark, groping for a switch. Barrie tells us with a wink that they will grope through the dark again before the night is over, and far more terribly. When the light comes on, the garden seems to step back, as if beaten. But it is only waiting.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 15 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1922
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 1 h 35 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Barrie, J. M. Dear Brutus. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/dear-brutus.
Barrie, J. M. (2026). Dear Brutus. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/dear-brutus (Original work published 1922)
Barrie, J. M. Dear Brutus. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/dear-brutus.
@book{barrie2026dear,
author = {Barrie, J. M.},
title = {Dear Brutus},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/dear-brutus},
note = {First published 1922}
}
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What is Dear Brutus about?
It follows a group of guests at Lob's country house on Midsummer Eve. They enter a wood that gives each of them a second chance, and the play asks whether new circumstances can change who they are.
Where does the title Dear Brutus come from?
It comes from a line of Shakespeare's, in which a man says the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves. A character quotes it in the play, which tests that idea.
Who is Lob in Dear Brutus?
Lob is the tiny, very old host who invites the guests. The ladies compare him to Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, and he treats flowers like children while he plots mischief.
The author
J. M. Barrie
1860–1937 · Scottish novelist and playwright
J. M. Barrie was a Scottish novelist and playwright, remembered above all as the creator of Peter Pan. Peter and Wendy (1911), his novelization of the beloved stage play, gave the world Neverland, Tinker Bell, and Captain Hook in their fullest literary form.
More by J. M. Barrie
See all their booksMore like this
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