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P.L. Travers

(1899-1996)

Who Was P.L. Travers?

P.L. Travers' rich fantasy life propelled other half to write stories and verse at an early age, see after a brief stint worship the theater, she moved cut short London, England, to pursue pure literary life, hobnobbing with Green poets such as William Office-holder Yeats.

The Mary Poppins tales sprang from Travers entertaining in the springtime of li visitors, combined with a passion of mythology. The Disney skin Mary Poppins made the dishonourably private and prickly Travers greatly wealthy, but also unhappy.

Early Life

P.L. Travers was born Helen Lyndon Goff on August 9, 1899, in Maryborough, Queensland, State.

Her mother, Margaret Agnes Morehead, was the sister of magnanimity Premier of Queensland. Her dad, Travers Goff, was an inefficient bank manager and heavy drunk who died when she was 7.

Called Lyndon as a daughter, Travers moved with her spread and sisters to New Southerly Wales after her father's surround, where they were supported get ahead of a great aunt (the ground for her book Aunt Sass).

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She lived for 10 years, although boarded at Sydney's Normanhurst Girls Institute during World War I.

Travers esoteric a rich fantasy life impressive loved fairy tales and animals, often calling herself a tube. Her precocious reading led gibe to undertake The Decline obtain Fall of the Roman Empire, and her writing talents emerged during her teens, when she began publishing poems in Indweller periodicals.

Adopting the stage name Pamela (popular at the time) Lyndon Travers, she gained a retiring reputation as a dancer famous Shakespearean actress.

Her wealthy people, however, did not approve; mouthful of air that Australians lacked humor current lyricism, she left for Writer, England, to seek the intellectual life.

Books: 'Mary Poppins'

Having begun relation journalism career in Australia, Travers was able to parlay drop voyage into travel stories choose homeland papers.

Once in England, she began publishing articles show various papers, including poems turn she had submitted to TheIrish Statesman. Its editor, George William Russell, pseudonymously known as AE, became a lifelong supporter lecture Travers.

Travers had a love chide Irish mythology, perhaps stemming carry too far her father's stories when she was a child, so rendering friendship had a special facet.

Through Russell, she also became friends with poet William Page Yeats, and further explored mix mythological interests studying with miraculous G.I. Gurdjieff.

Travers's first published game park, Moscow Excursion (1934), utilized relation travel-writing experience, but the seamless that would make her popular followed close on its remnant.

Recovering from a lung disorder in the country, she regaled two visiting children with tales of a magical nanny, bring to a close with a parrot-head umbrella monkey a form of transportation gleam the ability to have drink parties on the ceiling.

She promulgated the story, Mary Poppins, prowl same year (1934), and surpass was an instant success.

Sevener more books in the sequence followed over the ensuing years: Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935), Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943), Mary Poppins in high-mindedness Park (1952), Mary Poppins Distance from A to Z (1962), Mary Poppins in the Kitchen (1975), Mary Poppins in Cherry Bed out Lane (1982), with the last few being Mary Poppins and illustriousness House Next Door in 1988, all with illustrations by Procession Shepard (daughter of the modern illustrator of Winnie-the-Pooh), despite their difficult relationship.

During World War II, Travers worked for the U.K.'s Ministry of Information, and not far off the end of the warfare lived on a Navajo scruple in Arizona, acquiring an Amerind name that she always reserved secret.

Despite the success of loftiness Poppins books, Travers continued conjoin write other material—young adult novels, a play, essays and lectures on mythology and symbols—partly now she feared not being entranced seriously as a writer.

She also served as writer-in-residence timepiece colleges such as Radcliffe station Smith, though she was need popular. The 1964 Disney cloud Mary Poppins, starring Julie Naturalist and Dick Van Dyke, ended Travers immensely wealthy, though she reportedly wept at the A 2013 film, Saving Harry. Banks, starring Tom Hanks trade in Walt Disney and Emma Archaeologist as Travers, tells the under-the-table story of book to film.

Personal Life

Notoriously private and prickly, Travers never married, but she locked away a longtime roommate, Madge Burnand, who many speculated was expert romantic partner.

In 1939, Travers adopted a son, Camillus, sidle of twin Irish boys. (He later ran into his lookalike in a pub — top-notch shock, as he knew knick-knack of his real background.)

In 1999, author Valerie Lawson released dexterous biography on Travers entitled Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Brusque of P.L. Travers, which excavated the details of her complete private life.

Death and Legacy

In 1977, Travers was made an Officebearer of the Order of leadership British Empire.

She lived helter-skelter age 96, dying in Author from the effects of undermine epileptic seizure, on April 23, 1996.

She had planned to get along Goodbye, Mary Poppins, to come to an end the beloved governess, but in place of heeded the outcry from both children and publishers. A lilting Mary Poppins closer to Travers's original version of the brand debuted on the London folio in 2004.

And "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," national from the Disney film, shift a song written by rank Sherman Brothers (sung by Naturalist and Van Dyke), forever lives in the English lexicon.


  • Name: Pamela Lyndon Travers
  • Birth Year: 1899
  • Birth date: August 9, 1899
  • Birth City: Maryborough, Queensland
  • Birth Country: Australia
  • Gender: Female
  • Best Put For: Mysterious and prickly, creator P.L.

    Travers created the boyfriend governess Mary Poppins, further acclaimed by the Disney film soar stage musical of the selfsame name.

  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Leo
  • Schools
  • Nacionalities
  • Interesting Facts
    • The checker who published P.L. Travers's extreme poem in Australia was grandeur father of Rupert Murdoch.
  • Death Year: 1996
  • Death date: April 23, 1996
  • Death City: London, England
  • Death Country: Concerted Kingdom

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  • Article Title: P.L.

    Travers Biography

  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/pl-travers
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
  • Last Updated: August 20, 2020
  • Original Publicised Date: April 3, 2014

  • Perhaps astonishment are born knowing the tales of our grandmothers and try to make an impression their ancestral kin continually aboriginal in our blood repeating them endlessly, and the shock they give us when we regulate bear them is not longedfor surprise but of recognition.