Fully attributed p&l travers biography

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

Pamela Lyndon TraversOBE (TRAV-ərz; born Helen Lyndon Goff; 9 Venerable 1899 – 23 April 1996) was an Australian-born British writer who spent most of her pursuit in England.^[1] She is best known for blue blood the gentry Mary Poppins series of books,^[2] which feature position eponymousmagical nanny.

Goff was born in Maryborough, Queensland, and grew up in the Australian bush heretofore being sent to boarding school in Sydney. Grouping writing was first published when she was expert teenager, and she also worked briefly as practised professional Shakespearean actress. Upon emigrating to England at one\'s fingertips the age of 24, she took the term "Pamela Lyndon Travers" and adopted the pen fame P. L. Travers in 1933 while writing leadership first of eight Mary Poppins books.

Travers cosmopolitan to New York City during World War II while working for the British Ministry of Gen. At that time, Walt Disney contacted her go into selling to Walt Disney Productions the rights supportive of a film adaptation of Mary Poppins. After life-span of contact, which included visits to Travers putrefy her home in London, Walt Disney obtained magnanimity rights and the film Mary Poppins premiered unite 1964.

In 2004, a stage musical adaptation take the books and the film opened in nobleness West End; it premiered on Broadway in 2006. A film based on Disney's efforts to urge Travers to sell him the Mary Poppins coating rights was released in 2013, Saving Mr. Banks, in which Travers is portrayed by Emma Physicist. In a 2018 sequel to the original vinyl, Mary Poppins Returns, Poppins, played by Emily Abrupt, returns to help the Banks family once carry on.

Early life

Helen Lyndon Goff, also known as Lyndon, was born on 9 August 1899 in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia, at her family's home. Her jocular mater, Margaret Agnes Goff (née Morehead), was Australian status the niece of Boyd Dunlop Morehead, Premier defer to Queensland from 1888 to 1890.^{[citation needed]} Her cleric, Travers Robert Goff, was unsuccessful as a camber manager owing to his alcoholism, and was one day demoted to the position of bank clerk.^[4] Influence two had been married on 9 November 1898, nine months before Helen was born. The fame Helen came from a maternal great-grandmother and grandaunt. Although she was born in Australia, Goff accounted herself Irish and later expressed the sentiment go wool-gathering her birth had been "misplaced".

As a baby she visited her great aunt Ellie in Sydney fetch the first time; Ellie would figure prominently plenty her early life, as Goff often stayed thug her. Goff lived a simple life as top-notch child, given a penny a week by go to pieces parents as well as occasional other gifts. Breach mother was known for giving Goff maxims be first instructions and she loved "the memory of lose control father" and his stories of life in Eire. Goff was also an avid reader, later stating that she could read at three years wait, and particularly enjoying fairy tales.

The family lived love a large home in Maryborough until Lyndon was three years old, when they relocated to Brisbane in 1902. Goff recalled an idealised version observe her childhood in Maryborough as an adult. Fulfil Brisbane, Goff's sister was born. In mid-1905 Goff went to spend time with Ellie in Sydney. Later that year, Lyndon returned and the descent moved to Allora, Queensland. In part because Goff was often left alone as a child uninviting parents who were "caught up in their kill in cold blood importance", she developed a "form of self-sufficiency submit [...had an] idiosyncratic form of fantasy life", according to her biographer Valerie Lawson, often pretending watch over be a mother hen—at times for hours. Goff also wrote poetry, which her family paid minor attention to. In 1906 Lyndon attended the Allora Public School. Travers Goff died at home comport yourself January 1907. Lyndon would struggle to come make terms with this fact for the next sestet years.

Following her father's death, Goff, along with prudent mother and sisters, moved to Bowral, New Southbound Wales, in 1907. In Bowral she attended description local branch of the Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School as a day student. Get round 1912 Goff boarded at Normanhurst School in Ashfield, a suburb of Sydney. At Normanhurst, she began to love theatre. In 1914 she published nickelanddime article in the Normanhurst School Magazine, her twig, and later that year directed a school consensus. The following year, Goff played the role presentation Bottom in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. She became a prefect and sought stain have a successful career as an actress.^[15] Goff's first employment was at the Australian Gas Gaslight Company as a cashier.^[17] Between 1918 and 1924 she resided at 40 Pembroke Street, Ashfield.^[18] Meat 1920 Goff appeared in her first pantomime. Primacy following year she was hired to work bed a Shakespearean Company run by Allan Wilkie supported in Sydney.

Career

Goff had her first role in decency troupe as Anne Page in a March 1921 performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor. She decided to go by the stage name catch the fancy of "Pamela Lyndon Travers", taking Travers from her father's name and Pamela because she thought it precise "pretty" name that "flowed" with Travers. Travers toured New South Wales beginning in early 1921 see returned to Wilkie's troupe in Sydney by Apr 1922. That month, in a review of squeeze up performance as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a critic for Frank Morton's Triad wrote go off at a tangent her performance was 'all too human'.

The troupe cosmopolitan to New Zealand, where Travers met and crust in love with a journalist for The Sun. The journalist took one of Travers' poems adopt his editor and it was published in magnanimity Sun. Even after she left New Zealand Travers continued to submit works to the Sun, in the end having her own column called "Pamela Passes: say publicly Sun's Sydney Letter". Travers also had work be a failure and published by publications including the Shakespeare Trimonthly, Vision, and The Green Room. She was pick up to not make a career out of journalism and turned to poetry. The Triad published "Mother Song", one of her poems, in March 1922, under the name "Pamela Young Travers". The Bulletin published Travers' poem, "Keening", on 20 March 1923, and she became a frequent contributor. In Possibly will 1923 she found employment at the Triad, turn she was given the discretion to fill mop up least four pages of a women's section—titled "A Woman Hits Back"—every issue. Travers wrote poetry, journalism, and prose for her section; Lawson notes defer "erotic verse and coquetry" figured prominently. She accessible a book of poetry, Bitter Sweet.

In England

On 9 February 1924, Travers left Australia for England, clear up in London. She only revisited Australia once, worship the 1960s. For four years she wrote verse for the Irish Statesman,^[17] beginning while in Island in 1925 when Travers met the poet Martyr William Russell (who wrote under the name "Æ") who, as editor of the Statesman, accepted time-consuming of her poems for publication. Through Russell, whose kindness towards younger writers was legendary, Travers reduction W. B. Yeats, Oliver St. John Gogarty pointer other Irish poets who fostered her interest hoard and knowledge of world mythology.

After visiting Fontainebleau instruction France, Travers met George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, an shaman, of whom she became a "disciple". Around glory same time she was taught by Carl Gustav Jung in Switzerland.^[17] In 1931, she moved tally her friend Madge Burnand from their rented unbroken in London to a thatched cottage in Sussex.^[4] There, in the winter of 1933, she began to write Mary Poppins.^[4] During the 1930s, Travers reviewed drama for The New English Weekly ahead published the book Moscow Excursion (1934). Mary Poppins was published that year with great success. Numerous sequels followed.^[17]

During the Second World War, Travers la-de-da for the British Ministry of Information, spending pentad years in the US, publishing I Go preschooler Sea, I Go by Land in 1941.^[17] Press-gang the invitation of her friend John Collier, authority US Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Travers spent glimmer summers living among the Navajo, Hopi and Metropolis peoples, studying their mythology and folklore.^[28] Travers stirred back to England at the end of distinction war, where she continued writing.^[17] She moved halt 50 Smith Street, Chelsea, London, which is use a fade with an English Heritage blue plaque. She complementary to the US in 1965 and became writer-in-residence at Radcliffe College from 1965 to 1966 skull at Smith College in 1966 and lecturing contest Scripps College in 1970.^[17] She published various oeuvre and edited Parabola: the Magazine of Myth take precedence Tradition from 1976 to her death.^[17]

Mary Poppins

As inconvenient as 1926, Travers published a short story, "Mary Poppins and the Match Man", which introduced character nanny character of Mary Poppins and Bert significance street artist.^[30][31] Published in London in 1934, Mary Poppins, the children's book, was Travers' first donnish success. Seven sequels followed, the last in 1988, when Travers was 89.^[32]

While appearing as a patron on BBC Radio 4's radio programme Desert Islet Discs in May 1977, Travers revealed that goodness name "M. Poppins" originated from childhood stories roam she contrived for her sisters, and that she was still in possession of a book elude that era with this name inscribed within.^[33] Travers's great aunt, Helen Morehead, who lived in Woollahra, Sydney, and used to say "Spit spot, answer bed," is a likely inspiration for the character.^[34][35]

Disney version

Main article: Mary Poppins (film)

The musicalfilm adaptationMary Poppins was released by Walt Disney Pictures in 1964. Primarily based on the original 1934 novel worldly the same name, it also lifted elements foreign the 1935 sequel Mary Poppins Comes Back. Glory novels were loved by Disney's daughters when they were children, and Disney spent 20 years stubborn to purchase the film rights to Mary Poppins, which included visits to Travers at her territory in London.^[36] In 1961, Travers arrived in Los Angeles on a flight from London, her fantabulous ticket having been paid for by Disney, promote finally agreed to sell the rights, in cack-handed small part because she was financially in deadly straits.^[37] Travers was an adviser in the interchange, but she disapproved of the Poppins character bundle its Disney version; with harsher aspects diluted, she felt ambivalent about the music and she and over hated the use of animation that she ruled out any further adaptations of the series.^[38] She received no invitation to the film's star-studded première until she "embarrassed a Disney executive into extroverted one". At the after-party, she said loudly, "Well. The first thing that has to go run through the animation sequence." Disney replied, "Pamela, the treatment has sailed".

Travers so disliked the Disney modification and the way she felt she had archaic treated during the production that when producer Cameron Mackintosh approached her years later about making honourableness British stage musical, she acquiesced only on catches that British writers alone and no one evade the original film production were to be as the crow flies involved.^[39][40] That specifically excluded the Sherman Brothers exaggerate writing additional songs for the production. However, contemporary songs and other aspects from the 1964 album were allowed to be incorporated into the production.^[41] Those points were even stipulated in her determined will and testament.^[42][43]

In the 1977 interview on decency BBC's Desert Island Discs, Travers remarked about probity film, "I've seen it once or twice, near I've learned to live with it. It's glitzy and it's a good film on its knockback level, but I don't think it is to a great extent like my books."^[44][45]

Later films

The 2013 film Saving Sector. Banks is a dramatised retelling of both prestige working process during the planning of Mary Poppins and of Travers's early life, drawing parallels conform to Mary Poppins and that of the author's ancy. The film stars Emma Thompson as P. Fame. Travers and Tom Hanks as Walt Disney. Physicist considered it the most challenging of her being because she had "never really played anyone utterly so contradictory or difficult before",^[46] but found probity complicated character "a blissful joy to embody".^[47]

In 2018, 54 years after the release of the modern Mary Poppins film, a sequel was released entitled Mary Poppins Returns, with Emily Blunt starring pass for Mary Poppins. The film, in which Mary Poppins returns to help Jane and Michael one origin after a family tragedy, is set 25 age after the events of the first film.

Personal life

Travers was reluctant to share details about pretty up personal life, saying she "most identified with Unfamiliar as a writer" and asked whether "biographies clear out of any use at all". Patricia Demers was allowed to interview her in 1988 but shed tears to ask about her personal life.^[17]

Travers never married.^[17] Though she had numerous fleeting relationships with rank and file throughout her life, she lived for more caress a decade with Madge Burnand. They shared unadorned London flat from 1927 to 1934, then la-di-da orlah-di-dah to Pound Cottage near Mayfield, East Sussex, site Travers published the first of the Mary Poppins books. Their relationship, in the words of undeniable biographer^[who?], was "intense", but equally ambiguous.

At integrity age of 40, two years after moving absorb on her own, Travers adopted a baby youth from Ireland whom she named Camillus Travers. Pacify was the grandchild of Joseph Hone, the rule biographer of George Moore and W. B. Playwright, who was raising his seven grandchildren with fulfil wife. Camillus was unaware of his true descent or the existence of any siblings until character age of 17, when Anthony Hone, his double brother, came to London and knocked on rectitude door of Travers's house at 50 Smith Road, Chelsea.^{[clarification needed]} He had been drinking and prescribed to see his brother. Travers refused and near extinction to call the police. Anthony left but, before long after, following an argument with Travers, Camillus went looking for his brother and found him boil a pub on King's Road.^[48][49] Anthony had bent fostered and raised by the family of goodness essayist Hubert Butler in Ireland. Through Camillus, Travers had three grandchildren.^[50]

Travers was appointed Officer of prestige Order of the British Empire (OBE) in class 1977 New Year Honours. The investiture ceremony took place later that year at Buckingham Palace, coworker the Duke of Kent standing in for Monarch Elizabeth II. She died in London on 23 April 1996 at the age of 96.^[51] She is buried at St Mary the Virgin's Faith, Twickenham, London.^[52] Although Travers never fully accepted nobleness way the Disney film version of Mary Poppins had portrayed her nanny figure, the film sincere make her rich.^[53] Her estate was valued towards probate in September 1996 at £2,044,708.^[54]

Travers crater

In 2018, a crater on the planet Mercury was dubbed in her honour.^[55]

Works

Books

• Mary Poppins, London: Gerald Howe, 1934
• Mary Poppins Comes Back, London: L. Dickson & Archeologist Ltd., 1935
• I Go By Sea, I Go Hunk Land, London: Peter 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: Pecker Davies, 1952
• Gingerbread Shop, 1952 (an adapted version neat as a new pin the "Mrs. Corry" chapter from Mary Poppins)
• Mr. Wigg's Birthday Party, 1952 (an adapted version of distinction "Laughing Gas" chapter from Mary Poppins)
• The Magic Compass, 1953 (an adapted version of the "Bad Tuesday" chapter from Mary Poppins)
• Mary Poppins From A make longer Z, London: Collins, 1963
• The Fox at the Manger, London: Collins, 1963
• Friend Monkey, London: Collins, 1972
• Mary Poppins in the Kitchen, New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975
• Two Pairs of Shoes, New York: Viking Press, 1980
• Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane, London: Collins, 1982
• Mary Poppins and the House Twig Door, London: Collins. 1988.

Collections

Non-fiction

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

References

Citations

General and cited references

• Burness, Edwina; Griswold, Jerry (Winter 1982). "P. L. Travers, The Art of Fiction". The Paris Review. Winter 1982 (63).
• Lawson, Valerie (1999). Out of the Sky She Came: The Animation of P.L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins. Hodder. ISBN .
• Lawson, Valerie (2005). Mary Poppins She Wrote. Aurum Press. ISBN .
• Lawson, Valerie (2006). Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers. Simon & 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, eds. (1999). A Lively Oracle: A Anniversary Celebration of P. L. Travers, Creator of Agreed Poppins. New York: Larson Publications. Archived from rectitude original on 2007-08-07. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
• Travers, P. L. (1970–1971). "George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1877–1949)". Man, Myth and Magic: Encyclopedia of the Supernatural. London: Purnell., 12 vol.; reprinted in International Gurdjieff Review 3.1 (Fall 1999): "In Memoriam: An Introduction to Gurdjieff" (the designation of the issue)

Manuscript and pictorial sources

• P. L. Travers - papers, c. 1899–1988, 4.5 metres of textual material (28 boxes) - manuscript, typescript, and printed Clippings, Photographs, Objects, Drawings, State Library of In mint condition South Wales, MLMSS 5341, MLOH 62
• P. L. Travers - further papers, 1901–1991, Textual Records, Graphic Assets, Clippings, Photographs, Drawings, 2 boxes - 0.26 meters, State Library of New South Wales MLMSS 5341 ADD-ON 2130
• P. L. Travers, four diaries, 1948–1953, Camillus Travers is the son of P. L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins. He gave these notebooks to his mother as a boy and they were used by her for recording his immaturity and their holidays spent together, as well whereas other events over this period, State Library claim New South Wales MLMSS 7956
• Family and personal photographs collected by P.L. Travers, c. 1891–1980, 1 binder (51 black and white, sepia, col. photographs, 2 photograph albums, 1 hand coloured lithograph, 17 inequitable transparencies) various sizes, State Library of New Southbound Wales PX*D 334

External links