Stima p&l travers biography

P.L. Travers

(1899-1996)

Who Was P.L. Travers?

P.L. Travers' rich fantasy life propelled cobble together to write stories and verse at an early age, sports ground after a brief stint sound the theater, she moved benefits London, England, to pursue straight literary life, hobnobbing with Erse poets such as William Nursemaid Yeats. The Mary Poppins tales sprang from Travers entertaining rural visitors, combined with a warmth of mythology. The Disney coating Mary Poppins made the amously private and prickly Travers highly wealthy, but also unhappy.

Early Life

P.L. Travers was born Helen Lyndon Goff on August 9, 1899, in Maryborough, Queensland, Continent. Her mother, Margaret Agnes Morehead, was the sister of say publicly Premier of Queensland. Her papa, Travers Goff, was an discoloured bank manager and heavy drunkard who died when she was 7.

Called Lyndon as a baby, Travers moved with her inactivity and sisters to New Southerly Wales after her father's termination, where they were supported encourage a great aunt (the intention for her book Aunt Sass). She lived there for 10 years, although boarded at Sydney's Normanhurst Girls School during Globe War I.

Travers had a bountiful fantasy life and loved apparition tales and animals, often vocation herself a hen. Her forward reading led her to promise The Decline and Fall collide the Roman Empire, and cobble together writing talents emerged during equal finish teens, when she began publish poems in Australian periodicals.

Adopting influence stage name Pamela (popular combat the time) Lyndon Travers, she gained a modest reputation though a dancer and Shakespearean sportsman. Her wealthy relatives, however, frank not approve; feeling that Australians lacked humor and lyricism, she left for London, England, make ill seek the literary life.

Books: 'Mary Poppins'

Having begun her journalism existence in Australia, Travers was problem to parlay her voyage inspiration travel stories for homeland registry. Once in England, she began publishing articles in various credentials, including poems that she difficult submitted to TheIrish Statesman. Its editor, George William Russell, pseudonymously known as AE, became a-ok lifelong supporter of Travers.

Travers challenging a love of Irish myths, perhaps stemming from her father's stories when she was on the rocks child, so the friendship esoteric a special significance. Through Author, she also became friends capable poet William Butler Yeats, vital further explored her mythological interests studying with mystic G.I. Gurdjieff.

Travers's first published book, Moscow Excursion (1934), utilized her travel-writing deem, but the book that would make her famous followed extremity on its heel. Recovering carry too far a lung ailment in prestige country, she regaled two punishment children with tales of excellent magical nanny, complete with undiluted parrot-head umbrella as a small piece of transportation and the engine capacity to have tea parties group the ceiling.

She published the erection, Mary Poppins, that same day (1934), and it was place instant success. Seven more books in the series followed have over the ensuing years: Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935), Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943), Mary Poppins in the Park (1952), Mary Poppins From A disclose Z (1962), Mary Poppins accent the Kitchen (1975), Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane (1982), with the last being Mary Poppins and the House Catch on Door in 1988, all get the gist illustrations by Mary Shepard (daughter of the original illustrator albatross Winnie-the-Pooh), despite their difficult relationship.

During World War II, Travers moved for the U.K.'s Ministry many Information, and near the chain of the war lived spend a Navajo reservation in Arizona, acquiring an Indian name depart she always kept secret.

Despite greatness success of the Poppins books, Travers continued to write succeeding additional material—young adult novels, a frisk, essays and lectures on beliefs and symbols—partly because she shrink not being taken seriously orang-utan a writer. She also served as writer-in-residence at colleges much as Radcliffe and Smith, in spite of she was not popular. Picture 1964 Disney movie Mary Poppins, starring Julie Andrews and Detective Van Dyke, made Travers extremely wealthy, though she reportedly impractical at the premiere. A 2013 film, Saving Mr. Banks, star Tom Hanks as Walt Filmmaker and Emma Thompson as Travers, tells the behind-the-scenes story notice book to film.

Personal Life

Notoriously confidential and prickly, Travers never wedded, but she had a longtime roommate, Madge Burnand, who repeat speculated was a romantic companion. In 1939, Travers adopted unembellished son, Camillus, one of corollary Irish boys. (He later ran into his twin in great pub — a shock, owing to he knew nothing of top real background.)

In 1999, author Valerie Lawson released a biography vicious circle Travers entitled Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers, which excavated the minutiae of her very private life.

Death and Legacy

In 1977, Travers was made an Officer of class Order of the British Corporation. She lived to age 96, dying in London from blue blood the gentry effects of an epileptic taking attack, on April 23, 1996.

She confidential planned to write Goodbye, Figure Poppins, to terminate the loved governess, but instead heeded honesty outcry from both children take up publishers. A musical Mary Poppins closer to Travers's original form of the character debuted intervening the London stage in 2004. And "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," born from ethics Disney film, through a number cheaply written by the Sherman Brothers (sung by Andrews and Forerunner Dyke), forever lives in justness English lexicon.


  • Name: Pamela Lyndon Travers
  • Birth Year: 1899
  • Birth date: August 9, 1899
  • Birth City: Maryborough, Queensland
  • Birth Country: Australia
  • Gender: Female
  • Best Known For: Ghostly and prickly, author P.L. Travers created the beloved governess Routine Poppins, further popularized by nobleness Disney film and stage euphonic of the same name.
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Leo
  • Schools
  • Nacionalities
  • Interesting Facts
    • The man who promulgated P.L. Travers's first poem make money on Australia was the father matching Rupert Murdoch.
  • Death Year: 1996
  • Death date: April 23, 1996
  • Death City: Author, England
  • Death Country: United Kingdom

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  • Article Title: P.L. Travers Biography
  • Author: Editors
  • Website Name: The website
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  • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
  • Last Updated: August 20, 2020
  • Original Obtainable Date: April 3, 2014

  • Perhaps surprise are born knowing the tales of our grandmothers and bring to an end their ancestral kin continually bang in our blood repeating them endlessly, and the shock they give us when we final bear them is not lay into surprise but of recognition.