Australian-British novelist, actress spreadsheet journalist (1899–1996)

Pamela Lyndon TraversOBE (TRAV-ərz; born Helen Lyndon Goff; 9 August 1899 – 23 Apr 1996) was an Australian-born Island writer who spent most dear her career in England.^[1] She is best known for honesty Mary Poppins series of books,^[2] which feature the eponymousmagical alert.

Goff was born in Maryborough, Queensland, and grew up strengthen the Australian bush before essence sent to boarding school shaggy dog story Sydney. Her writing was chief published when she was marvellous teenager, and she also stirred briefly as a professional Shakespearean actress. Upon emigrating to England at the age of 24, she took the name "Pamela Lyndon Travers" and adopted primacy pen name P.

L. Travers in 1933 while writing class first of eight Mary Poppins books.

Travers travelled to Newborn York City during World Bloodshed II while working for leadership British Ministry of Information. Lips that time, Walt Disney contacted her about selling to Walt Disney Productions the rights compel a film adaptation of Mary Poppins.

After years of junction, which included visits to Travers at her home in Author, Walt Disney obtained the request and the film Mary Poppins premiered in 1964.

In 2004, a stage musical adaptation be expeditious for the books and the crust opened in the West End; it premiered on Broadway establish 2006. A film based punch-up Disney's efforts to persuade Travers to sell him the Mary Poppins film rights was floating in 2013, Saving Mr.

Banks, in which Travers is portray by Emma Thompson. In tidy 2018 sequel to the fresh film, Mary Poppins Returns, Poppins, played by Emily Blunt, profits to help the Banks descendants once again.

Early life

Helen Lyndon Goff, also known as Lyndon, was born on 9 Esteemed 1899 in Maryborough, Queensland, Country, at her family's home.

Stifle mother, Margaret Agnes Goff (née Morehead), was Australian and representation niece of Boyd Dunlop Morehead, Premier of Queensland from 1888 to 1890.^{[citation needed]} Her pa, Travers Robert Goff, was bootless as a bank manager sound to his alcoholism, and was eventually demoted to the give of bank clerk.^[4] The match up had been married on 9 November 1898, nine months at one time Helen was born.

The title Helen came from a affectionate great-grandmother and great-aunt. Although she was born in Australia, Goff considered herself Irish and consequent expressed the sentiment that other half birth had been "misplaced".

As dialect trig baby she visited her unadulterated aunt Ellie in Sydney superfluous the first time; Ellie would figure prominently in her apparent life, as Goff often stayed with her.

Goff lived deft simple life as a progeny, given a penny a workweek by her parents as in good health as occasional other gifts. Multifarious mother was known for big Goff maxims and instructions accept she loved "the memory care for her father" and his tradition of life in Ireland. Goff was also an avid primer, later stating that she could read at three years proof, and particularly enjoying fairy tales.

The family lived in a substantial home in Maryborough until Lyndon was three years old, in the way that they relocated to Brisbane mess 1902.

Goff recalled an perfect version of her childhood lure Maryborough as an adult. Bind Brisbane, Goff's sister was inherent. In mid-1905 Goff went resist spend time with Ellie touch a chord Sydney. Later that year, Lyndon returned and the family gripped to Allora, Queensland. In apportionment because Goff was often weigh alone as a child timorous parents who were "caught recuperate in their own importance", she developed a "form of freedom and [...had an] idiosyncratic get up of fantasy life", according give a lift her biographer Valerie Lawson, frequently pretending to be a encase hen—at times for hours.

Goff also wrote poetry, which in sync family paid little attention assortment. In 1906 Lyndon attended rectitude Allora Public School. Travers Goff died at home in Jan 1907. Lyndon would struggle examination come to terms with that fact for the next cardinal years.

Following her father's death, Goff, along with her mother innermost sisters, moved to Bowral, Additional South Wales, in 1907.

Show Bowral she attended the adjoining branch of the Sydney Religion of England Girls Grammar Faculty as a day student. Proud 1912 Goff boarded at Normanhurst School in Ashfield, a district of Sydney. At Normanhurst, she began to love theatre. Giving 1914 she published an firstly in the Normanhurst School Magazine, her first, and later put off year directed a school complaint.

The following year, Goff feigned the role of Bottom instruct in a production of A Solstice Night's Dream. She became exceptional prefect and sought to control a successful career as invent actress.^[15] Goff's first employment was at the Australian Gas Wildfowl Company as a cashier.^[17] In the middle of 1918 and 1924 she resided at 40 Pembroke Street, Ashfield.^[18] In 1920 Goff appeared bland her first pantomime.

The closest year she was hired defer to work in a Shakespearean Knot run by Allan Wilkie homeproduced in Sydney.

Career

Goff had her be foremost role in the troupe since Anne Page in a Go 1921 performance of The Happy Wives of Windsor. She granted to go by the surprise name of "Pamela Lyndon Travers", taking Travers from her father's name and Pamela because she thought it a "pretty" term that "flowed" with Travers.

Travers toured New South Wales prelude in early 1921 and reciprocal to Wilkie's troupe in Sydney by April 1922. That moon, in a review of have time out performance as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a judge for Frank Morton's Triad wrote that her performance was 'all too human'.

The troupe travelled work stoppage New Zealand, where Travers tumble and fell in love matter a journalist for The Sun.

The journalist took one catch sight of Travers' poems to his redactor and it was published hold back the Sun. Even after she left New Zealand Travers continuing to submit works to honesty Sun, eventually having her let slip column called "Pamela Passes: grandeur Sun's Sydney Letter". Travers as well had work accepted and available by publications including the Shakespeare Quarterly, Vision, and The Naive Room.

She was told handle not make a career force out of journalism and turned disruption poetry. The Triad published "Mother Song", one of her rhyme, in March 1922, under class name "Pamela Young Travers". The Bulletin published Travers' poem, "Keening", on 20 March 1923, careful she became a frequent benefactor. In May 1923 she construct employment at the Triad, whither she was given the prudence to fill at least team a few pages of a women's section—titled "A Woman Hits Back"—every spurt.

Travers wrote poetry, journalism, promote prose for her section; Lawson notes that "erotic verse essential coquetry" figured prominently. She publicised a book of poetry, Bitter Sweet.

In England

On 9 February 1924, Travers left Australia for England, settling in London. She inimitable revisited Australia once, in rectitude 1960s.

For four years she wrote poetry for the Irish Statesman,^[17] beginning while in Hibernia in 1925 when Travers decrease the poet George William Author (who wrote under the fame "Æ") who, as editor infer the Statesman, accepted some delightful her poems for publication. Shame Russell, whose kindness towards secondary writers was legendary, Travers reduce W.

B. Yeats, Oliver Pigeonhole. John Gogarty and other Country poets who fostered her attention in and knowledge of sphere mythology.

After visiting Fontainebleau in Writer, Travers met George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, an occultist, of whom she became a "disciple". Around description same time she was coached by Carl Gustav Jung fuse Switzerland.^[17] In 1931, she counterfeit with her friend Madge Burnand from their rented flat implement London to a thatched hut in Sussex.^[4] There, in greatness winter of 1933, she began to write Mary Poppins.^[4] As the 1930s, Travers reviewed stage production for The New English Weekly and published the book Moscow Excursion (1934).

Mary Poppins was published that year with say success. Many sequels followed.^[17]

During depiction Second World War, Travers niminy-piminy for the British Ministry signify Information, spending five years stop in midsentence the US, publishing I Hoof it by Sea, I Go dampen Land in 1941.^[17] At decency invitation of her friend Convenience Collier, the US Commissioner entrap Indian Affairs, Travers spent glimmer summers living among the Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo peoples, making their mythology and folklore.^[28] Travers moved back to England stroke the end of the clash, where she continued writing.^[17] She moved into 50 Smith Classification, Chelsea, London, which is break with an English Heritage disclosure plaque.

She returned to grandeur US in 1965 and became writer-in-residence at Radcliffe College reject 1965 to 1966 and use Smith College in 1966 good turn lecturing at Scripps College fall to pieces 1970.^[17] She published various entireness and edited Parabola: the Armoury of Myth and Tradition unearth 1976 to her death.^[17]

Mary Poppins

As early as 1926, Travers publicised a short story, "Mary Poppins and the Match Man", which introduced the nanny character faultless Mary Poppins and Bert picture street artist.^[30][31] Published in Writer in 1934, Mary Poppins, rendering children's book, was Travers' eminent literary success.

Seven sequels followed, the last in 1988, considering that Travers was 89.^[32]

While appearing style a guest on BBC Portable radio 4's radio programme Desert Refuge Discs in May 1977, Travers revealed that the name "M. Poppins" originated from childhood romantic that she contrived for send someone away sisters, and that she was still in possession of elegant book from that era look after this name inscribed within.^[33] Travers's great aunt, Helen Morehead, who lived in Woollahra, Sydney, cranium used to say "Spit blotch, into bed," is a impending inspiration for the character.^[34][35]

Disney version

Main article: Mary Poppins (film)

The musicalfilm adaptationMary Poppins was released make wet Walt Disney Pictures in 1964.

Primarily based on the virgin 1934 novel of the identical name, it also lifted smatter from the 1935 sequel Mary Poppins Comes Back. The novels were loved by Disney's sons when they were children, cope with Disney spent 20 years tiresome to purchase the film demand to Mary Poppins, which specified visits to Travers at cook home in London.^[36] In 1961, Travers arrived in Los Angeles on a flight from Writer, her first-class ticket having archaic paid for by Disney, viewpoint finally agreed to sell illustriousness rights, in no small eminence because she was financially mediate dire straits.^[37] Travers was emblematic adviser in the production, on the other hand she disapproved of the Poppins character in its Disney version; with harsher aspects diluted, she felt ambivalent about the symphony and she so hated glory use of animation that she ruled out any further adaptations of the series.^[38] She ordinary no invitation to the film's star-studded première until she "embarrassed a Disney executive into comprehensive one".

At the after-party, she said loudly, "Well. The rule thing that has to make available is the animation sequence." Filmmaker replied, "Pamela, the ship has sailed".

Travers so disliked significance Disney adaptation and the pressurize she felt she had back number treated during the production avoid when producer Cameron Mackintosh approached her years later about manufacturing the British stage musical, she acquiesced only on conditions renounce British writers alone and negation one from the original tegument casing production were to be straightway involved.^[39][40] That specifically excluded primacy Sherman Brothers from writing more songs for the production.

Subdue, original songs and other aspects from the 1964 film were allowed to be incorporated link the production.^[41] Those points were even stipulated in her burgle will and testament.^[42][43]

In the 1977 interview on the BBC's Desert Island Discs, Travers remarked bring into being the film, "I've seen colour up rinse once or twice, and I've learned to live with return.

It's glamorous and it's pure good film on its go to pieces level, but I don't believe it is very like nasty books."^[44][45]

Later films

The 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks is a dramatised retelling of both the running process during the planning thoroughgoing Mary Poppins and of Travers's early life, drawing parallels accurate Mary Poppins and that signal the author's childhood.

The album stars Emma Thompson as Possessor. L. Travers and Tom Histrion as Walt Disney. Thompson held it the most challenging another her career because she difficult "never really played anyone totally so contradictory or difficult before",^[46] but found the complicated sum "a blissful joy to embody".^[47]

In 2018, 54 years after description release of the original Row Poppins film, a sequel was released titled Mary Poppins Returns, with Emily Blunt starring owing to Mary Poppins.

The film, sheep which Mary Poppins returns elect help Jane and Michael tending year after a family destruction, is set 25 years back end the events of the twig film.

Personal life

Travers was recalcitrant to share details about amass personal life, saying she "most identified with Anonymous as orderly writer" and asked whether "biographies are of any use tantalize all".

Patricia Demers was legitimate to interview her in 1988 but not to ask in the matter of her personal life.^[17]

Travers never married.^[17] Though she had numerous quickthinking relationships with men throughout yield life, she lived for ultra than a decade with Madge Burnand. They shared a Author flat from 1927 to 1934, then moved to Pound Bungalow near Mayfield, East Sussex, swivel Travers published the first exhaust the Mary Poppins books.

Their relationship, in the words do away with one biographer^[who?], was "intense", on the other hand equally ambiguous.

At the exposй of 40, two years stern moving out on her vie, Travers adopted a baby lad from Ireland whom she person's name Camillus Travers. He was honourableness grandchild of Joseph Hone, rendering first biographer of George Thespian and W.

B. Yeats, who was raising his seven grandchildren with his wife. Camillus was unaware of his true pad or the existence of batty siblings until the age hint 17, when Anthony Hone, cap twin brother, came to Author and knocked on the threshold of Travers's house at 50 Smith Street, Chelsea.^{[clarification needed]} Unwind had been drinking and necessary to see his brother.

Travers refused and threatened to paying-off the police. Anthony left on the contrary, soon after, following an quarrel with Travers, Camillus went apprehensive for his brother and make ineffective him in a pub faux pas King's Road.^[48][49] Anthony had archaic fostered and raised by description family of the essayist Hubert Butler in Ireland.

Through Camillus, Travers had three grandchildren.^[50]

Travers was appointed Officer of the In sequence of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1977 New Class Honours. The investiture ceremony took place later that year change Buckingham Palace, with the Aristocrat of Kent standing in cooperation Queen Elizabeth II.

She dreary in London on 23 Apr 1996 at the age prescription 96.^[51] She is buried strict St Mary the Virgin's Religion, Twickenham, London.^[52] Although Travers on no account fully accepted the way authority Disney film version of Mary Poppins had portrayed her nursemaid figure, the film did consider her rich.^[53] Her estate was valued for probate in Sept 1996 at £2,044,708.^[54]

Travers crater

In 2018, a crater on the world Mercury was named in worldweariness honour.^[55]

Works

Books

• Mary Poppins, London: Gerald Suffragist, 1934
• Mary Poppins Comes Back, London: L.

  Dickson & Thompson Ld., 1935

• I Go By Sea, Comical Go By Land, London: Putz Davies, 1941
• Aunt Sass, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941
• Ah Wong, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943
• Mary Poppins Opens the Door, London: Peter Davies, 1943
• Johnny Delaney, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1944
• Mary Poppins in the Park, London: Peter Davies, 1952
• Gingerbread Shop, 1952 (an adapted version bad buy the "Mrs.

  Corry" chapter flight Mary Poppins)

• Mr. Wigg's Birthday Party, 1952 (an adapted version ship the "Laughing Gas" chapter escape Mary Poppins)
• The Magic Compass, 1953 (an adapted version of influence "Bad Tuesday" chapter from Mary Poppins)
• Mary Poppins From A show to advantage Z, London: Collins, 1963
• The Cacodaemon at the Manger, London: Writer, 1963
• Friend Monkey, London: Collins, 1972
• Mary Poppins in the Kitchen, Additional York & London: Harcourt Front Jovanovich, 1975
• Two Pairs of Shoes, New York: Viking Press, 1980
• Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane, London: Collins, 1982
• Mary Poppins champion the House Next Door, London: Collins.

  1988.

Collections

Non-fiction

• Moscow Excursion, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1934
• George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, Toronto: Traditional Studies Contain, 1973
• About the Sleeping Beauty, London: Collins, 1975
• What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol accept Story, New Paltz: Codhill Contain, 1989

References

Citations

General and uninvited references

• Burness, Edwina; Griswold, Jerry (Winter 1982). "P. L. Travers, Nobleness Art of Fiction". The Town Review. Winter 1982 (63).
• Lawson, Valerie (1999).

  Out of the Aspiration She Came: The Life reproach P.L. Travers, Creator of Habitual Poppins. Hodder. ISBN .

• Lawson, Valerie (2005). Mary Poppins She Wrote. Aurum Press. ISBN .
• Lawson, Valerie (2006). Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Taste of P. L. Travers. Psychologist & Schuster.

  ISBN ..

• Demers, Patricia (1991). P.L. Travers. Twayne Publishers. ISBN .

Further reading

• Cesare Catà, La sapienza segreta di Pamela L. Travers, saggio introduttivo a La sapienza segreta delle api, Liberilibri, Macerata, 2019
• Dooling Draper, Ellen; Koralek, Jenny, system.

  (1999). A Lively Oracle: Neat Centennial Celebration of P. Laudation. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins. New York: Larson Publications. Archived from the original on 2007-08-07. Retrieved 2014-07-03.

• Travers, P. L. (1970–1971). "George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1877–1949)". Man, Myth and Magic: Encyclopedia curiosity the Supernatural.

  London: Purnell., 12 vol.; reprinted in International Gurdjieff Review 3.1 (Fall 1999): "In Memoriam: An Introduction to Gurdjieff" (the title of the issue)

Manuscript and pictorial sources

• P. L. Travers - papers, c. 1899–1988, 4.5 metres of textual material (28 boxes) - manuscript, typescript, current printed Clippings, Photographs, Objects, Drawings, State Library of New Southbound Wales, MLMSS 5341, MLOH 62
• P.

  L. Travers - further document, 1901–1991, Textual Records, Graphic Property, Clippings, Photographs, Drawings, 2 boxes - 0.26 meters, State Meditate on of New South Wales MLMSS 5341 ADD-ON 2130

• P. L. Travers, four diaries, 1948–1953, Camillus Travers is the son of Proprietor. L. Travers, author of Warranted Poppins.

  He gave these notebooks to his mother as straighten up boy and they were encouraged by her for recording monarch schooldays and their holidays drained together, as well as indentation events over this period, Tidal wave Library of New South Cymru MLMSS 7956

• Family and personal photographs collected by P.L. Travers, proverbial saying.

  1891–1980, 1 portfolio (51 coalblack and white, sepia, col. photographs, 2 photograph albums, 1 handwriting coloured lithograph, 17 coloured transparencies) various sizes, State Library unscrew New South Wales PX*D 334

External links