J. M. Barrie worked for a year and a half as a staff journalist in Nottingham following a job advertisement found by his sister in The Scotsman, then returned to Kirriemuir, using his mother's stories about the town (which he called 'Thrums') for a piece submitted to the newspaper St. James's Gazette in London. The editor 'liked that Scotch thing', so Barrie wrote a series of them, which served as the basis for his first novels: Auld Licht Idylls (1888), A Window in Thrums (1890), and The Little Minister (1891). The stories depicted the "Auld Lichts", a strict religious sect that his grandfather had once belonged to. -- Wikipedia
