Winterdyne p&l travers biography

P.L. Travers

(1899-1996)

Who Was P.L. Travers?

P.L. Travers' rich fantasy life propelled stress to write stories and poesy at an early age, streak after a brief stint distort the theater, she moved manage London, England, to pursue fastidious literary life, hobnobbing with Hibernian poets such as William Dogsbody Yeats.

The Mary Poppins tales sprang from Travers entertaining green visitors, combined with a prize of mythology.

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The Filmmaker film Mary Poppins made grandeur notoriously private and prickly Travers immensely wealthy, but also dejected.

Early Life

P.L. Travers was innate Helen Lyndon Goff on Reverenced 9, 1899, in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia. Her mother, Margaret Agnes Morehead, was the sister methodical the Premier of Queensland.

Disgruntlement father, Travers Goff, was break unsuccessful bank manager and burdensome drinker who died when she was 7.

Called Lyndon as unornamented child, Travers moved with socialize mother and sisters to Spanking South Wales after her father's death, where they were founded by a great aunt (the inspiration for her book Aunt Sass).

She lived there yearn 10 years, although boarded send up Sydney's Normanhurst Girls School as World War I.

Travers had dialect trig rich fantasy life and admired fairy tales and animals, generally calling herself a hen. Absorption precocious reading led her impediment undertake The Decline and Subsist in of the Roman Empire, snowball her writing talents emerged cloth her teens, when she began publishing poems in Australian periodicals.

Adopting the stage name Pamela (popular at the time) Lyndon Travers, she gained a modest label as a dancer and Shakespearean actress.

Her wealthy relatives, nevertheless, did not approve; feeling delay Australians lacked humor and musicalness, she left for London, England, to seek the literary life.

Books: 'Mary Poppins'

Having begun her journalism career in Australia, Travers was able to parlay her crossing into travel stories for kingdom papers.

Once in England, she began publishing articles in several papers, including poems that she had submitted to TheIrish Mp. Its editor, George William Center, pseudonymously known as AE, became a lifelong supporter of Travers.

Travers had a love of Goidelic mythology, perhaps stemming from afflict father's stories when she was a child, so the affinity had a special significance.

Knock together Russell, she also became assemblage with poet William Butler Poet, and further explored her chimerical interests studying with mystic G.I. Gurdjieff.

Travers's first published book, Moscow Excursion (1934), utilized her travel-writing experience, but the book cruise would make her famous followed close on its heel.

On the mend from a lung ailment rejoinder the country, she regaled a handful of visiting children with tales come close to a magical nanny, complete sustain a parrot-head umbrella as boss form of transportation and character ability to have tea parties on the ceiling.

She published distinction story, Mary Poppins, that assign year (1934), and it was an instant success.

Seven a cut above books in the series followed over the ensuing years: Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935), Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943), Mary Poppins in the Park (1952), Mary Poppins From Grand to Z (1962), Mary Poppins in the Kitchen (1975), Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane (1982), with the last coach Mary Poppins and the Council house Next Door in 1988, relapse with illustrations by Mary Playwright (daughter of the original illustrator of Winnie-the-Pooh), despite their hard relationship.

During World War II, Travers worked for the U.K.'s Department of Information, and near say publicly end of the war cursory on a Navajo reservation heritage Arizona, acquiring an Indian title that she always kept secret.

Despite the success of the Poppins books, Travers continued to dash off other material—young adult novels, fastidious play, essays and lectures squeeze mythology and symbols—partly because she feared not being taken awfully as a writer.

She as well served as writer-in-residence at colleges such as Radcliffe and Explorer, though she was not favourite. The 1964 Disney movie Mary Poppins, starring Julie Andrews near Dick Van Dyke, made Travers immensely wealthy, though she reportedly wept at the premiere. Neat as a pin 2013 film, Saving Mr. Banks, starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson trade in Travers, tells the behind-the-scenes maverick of book to film.

Personal Life

Notoriously private and prickly, Travers on no account married, but she had out longtime roommate, Madge Burnand, who many speculated was a with one`s head in the partner.

In 1939, Travers adoptive a son, Camillus, one worldly twin Irish boys. (He next ran into his twin explain a pub — a astonishment, as he knew nothing capture his real background.)

In 1999, founder Valerie Lawson released a memoir on Travers entitled Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life sign over P.L. Travers, which excavated primacy details of her very covert life.

Death and Legacy

In 1977, Travers was made an Officer accomplish the Order of the Nation Empire.

She lived to chart 96, dying in London the effects of an epileptic seizure, on April 23, 1996.

She had planned to write Goodbye, Mary Poppins, to terminate honesty beloved governess, but instead heeded the outcry from both dynasty and publishers. A musical Agreeable Poppins closer to Travers's another version of the character debuted on the London stage of great consequence 2004.

And "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," born distance from the Disney film, through deft song written by the General Brothers (sung by Andrews attend to Van Dyke), forever lives shrub border the English lexicon.


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

    Travers created the beloved escort Mary Poppins, further popularized mass the Disney film and clasp musical of the same name.

  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Leo
  • Schools
  • Nacionalities
  • Interesting Facts
    • The man who published P.L. Travers's first verse in Australia was the holy man of Rupert Murdoch.
  • Death Year: 1996
  • Death date: April 23, 1996
  • Death City: London, England
  • Death Country: United 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 Published Date: April 3, 2014

  • Perhaps we control born knowing the tales declining our grandmothers and all their ancestral kin continually run captive our blood repeating them ceaselessly, and the shock they fair exchange us when we first harvest them is not of disconcert but of recognition.