Pamela Lyndon Travers OBE (born Helen Lyndon Goff; 9 August 1899 – 23 April 1996) was a British novelist, actress and journalist.
In 1933 she began writing her series of children's novels about the mystical and magical English nanny Mary Poppins.
Her popular books have been adapted many times, including the 1964 film starring Julie Andrews and the Broadway musical originally produced in London's West End.
Helen Lyndon Goff (she was known within her family as Lyndon) was the daughter of an unsuccessful bank manager (later demoted to bank clerk) named Travers Robert Goff, who was born in Deptford, south London, England.
Her mother was Margaret Agnes née Morehead, the sister of Boyd Dunlop Morehead, who was Premier of Queensland 1888-1890. Travers Goff's job took the family to Allora in 1905, where he died of influenza two years later, aged only 43.
Following this, Lyndon Goff and her mother and sisters moved to Bowral, New South Wales in 1907, and lived there until 1917.
She boarded at Normanhurst Girls School in Sydney during World War I.
Lyndon Goff began publishing her poems while still a teenager and wrote for The Bulletin and Triad while also gaining a reputation as an actress.
She soon adopted the stage name "Pamela Lyndon Travers".
She toured Australia and New Zealand with a Shakespearean touring company before leaving for England in 1924.
There she dedicated herself to writing under the pen name P. L. Travers.
In 1931, she moved out of a rented flat in London that she shared with her friend Madge Burnand, and the two set up home together in a thatched Sussex cottage.
It was here, in the winter of 1933, that she began to write Mary Poppins.
Travers greatly admired and emulated J. M. Barrie, the author of the novel Peter Pan, which bears many structural resemblances to the Mary Poppins series.
Indeed, Travers' first publisher was Peter Llewelyn Davies, Barrie's adopted son and widely regarded as the model for Peter Pan.
In 1925 while in Ireland, Travers met the poet George William Russell (who wrote under the name "Æ") who, as editor of The Irish Statesman, accepted some of her poems for publication.
Through Russell, Travers met W. B. Yeats, Oliver St. John Gogarty, and other Irish poets who fostered her interest in and knowledge of world mythology.
She had studied the Gurdjieff System under Jane Heap and in March 1936, with the help of Jessie Orage, she met the mystic George Gurdjieff, who would have a great effect on her, as well as on several other literary figures.
While appearing as a guest on BBC Radio 4's radio program Desert Island Discs in May 1977, Travers revealed that the name ‘M Poppins’ originates from childhood stories that she contrived for her sisters, and that she was still in possession of a book from that age with this name inscribed within.
Published in London in 1934, Mary Poppins was Travers' first literary success.
Sequels followed (the last in 1988), as well as a collection of other novels, poetry collections and works of non-fiction.
During World War II, she lived in Manhattan where she worked for the British Ministry of Information; and that was where Roy Disney first contacted her about selling the Mary Poppins character to the Disney studio for film use.
After the war, she became Writer-in-Residence at Radcliffe Hall, Harvard University and Smith Hall.
She returned to England, making only one brief visit to Sydney in 1960 while on her way to Japan to study Zen mysticism.
However, in the early 1970s, flush with more royalties from the Mary Poppins film, Travers spent about two years with the native American Hopi Indian reservations on some personal research.
The Disney musical adaptation was released in 1964.
Primarily based on the first novel in what was then a sequence of four books, it also lifted elements from the sequel Mary Poppins Comes Back.
Although Travers was an adviser to the production, she disapproved of the dilution of the harsher aspects of Mary Poppins's character, felt ambivalent about the music, and so hated the use of animation that she ruled out any further adaptations of the later Mary Poppins novels.
At the film's star-studded premiere (to which she was not invited, but had to ask Walt Disney for permission to attend), she reportedly approached Disney and told him that the animated sequence had to go.
Disney responded by walking away, saying as he did, "Pamela, the ship has sailed".
Enraged at what she considered shabby treatment at Disney's hands, Travers would never again agree to another Poppins/Disney adaptation, though Disney made several attempts to persuade her to change her mind.
So fervent was Travers' dislike of the Disney adaptation and of the way she had been treated during the production, that when producer Cameron Mackintosh approached her about the stage musical when she was into her 90s, she acquiesced on the condition that only English-born writers (and specifically no Americans) and no one from the film production were to be directly involved with the creative process of the stage musical.
This specifically excluded the Sherman Brothers from writing additional songs for the production, even though they were still very prolific.
However, original songs and other aspects from the 1964 film were allowed to be incorporated into the production.
These points were stipulated in her last will and testament.
Although she never married, she had romantic relationships with both men and women.
Her biographer Valerie Lawson writes that she probably had a sexual relationship with Madge Burnand, and certainly one with Jessie Orage.
At the age of 40 Travers adopted a baby boy from Ireland named Camillus Hone.
He was one of seven grandchildren of Joseph and Vera Hone, Joseph being W. B. Yeats' first biographer.
Camillus was one of twins, but Travers refused to take his twin brother Tony Merluzzo or any of their other siblings.
She selected Camillus based on advice from her astrologer.
Anthony remained with his grandparents.
Neither boy was aware of the other twin's existence until the age of 17, when Anthony appeared unannounced at Travers' London home.
Travers was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1977.
She lived into advanced old age but her health was declining towards the end of her life.
She died in London in 1996 reportedly of an epileptic seizure delirium.
Her adopted son Camillus Travers Hone died in London in November 2011.
Works
Books
Mary Poppins, London: Gerald Howe, 1934
Mary Poppins Comes Back, London: L. Dickson & Thompson Ltd., 1935
I Go By Sea, I Go By 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, 1944
Johnny Delaney, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1944
Mary Poppins in the Park, London: Peter Davies, 1952
Gingerbread Shop (1952)
Mr. Wigg's Birthday Party (1952)
The Magic Compass (1953)
Mary Poppins From A-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 Next Door, New York: Delacorte Press, 1989
Collections[edit source | editbeta]
Stories from Mary Poppins (1952)
Non-fiction[edit source | editbeta]
Moscow Excursion, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1934
About the Sleeping Beauty, London: Collins, 1975
What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol and Story (1989)
Books on P. L. Travers[edit source | editbeta]
P.L. Travers. Patricia Demers, Twayne Publishers, 1991, 141 p.
Out of the Sky She Came: The Life of P.L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins Valerie Lawson 1999 ISBN 0-7336-1072-2
A Lively Oracle: a Centennial Celebration of P. L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins. Ellen Dooling Draper and Jenny Koralek, editors. (New York: Larson Publications, 1999).
Mary Poppins She Wrote. Lawson,V., Aurum Press, 2005. ISBN 1-84513-126-6
References[edit source | editbeta]
^ a b c d Picardie, Justine (28 October 2008). "Was P L Travers the real Mary Poppins?". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 25 November 2010.
^ Lawson, Valerie (1999). Out of the Sky She Came. Hatchette Australia.
^ [1]
^ Lawson, Valerie (2006). Mary Poppins, she wrote. Simon & Schuster. p. 185. ISBN 0-7432-9816-0.
^ Roy Plomley (May 21, 1977). "Desert Island Discs - P L Travers". http://www.bbc.co.uk/
^ Continuum Encyclopedia of Children's Literature (2005) Bernice E. Cullinan, Diane Goetz Person. Continuum International Publishing Group. p.784 ISBN 9780826417787 Retrieved: Nov 2012
^ Jodie Minus, "There's something about Mary", The Weekend Australian, 10-11 April 2004. p.R6
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012)
External links[edit source | editbeta]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: P. L. Travers
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: P. L. Travers
P. L. Travers at Find a Grave
Edwina Burness, Jerry Griswold (Winter 1982). "P. L. Travers, The Art of Fiction No. 63". The Paris Review.
Gurdjieff by P.L. Travers, from Man, Myth and Magic: Encyclopedia of the Supernatural 12 vol., (London: Purnell, 1970–1971) reprinted on the International Gurdjieff Review web site.
Finding aid to Papers of P. L. Travers in State Library of New South Wales (pdf file).
Becoming Mary Poppins: P. L. Travers, Walt Disney, and the making of a myth. (Caitlin Flanagan, The New Yorker, 12 December 2005)
Secret Life of a Letter to the Editor, (Valerie Lawson, Columbia Journalism Review, February 2006)[dead link]
[2] Mark Bostridge on P.L. Travers and Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers
BooksMary Poppins (1934)
Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935)
Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943)
Mary Poppins in the Park (1952)
Mary Poppins From A to Z (1962)
Mary Poppins in the Kitchen (1975)
Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane (1982)
Mary Poppins and the House Next Door (1988)
CharactersMary Poppins
Mr. Banks
Mrs. Banks
The Banks children
Bert
Miss Lark
Admiral Boom
The servants
AdaptionsMary Poppins (film) (1964)
Mary Poppins, Goodbye (musical miniseries) (1983)
Mary Poppins (musical) (2004)
Songs"Sister Suffragette"
"The Life I Lead"
"The Perfect Nanny"
"A Spoonful of Sugar"
"Jolly Holiday"
"Supercalifragilisticexpia
"Stay Awake"
"I Love to Laugh"
"Feed the Birds"
"Fidelity Fiduciary Bank"
"Chim Chim Cher-ee"
"Step in Time"
"A Man Has Dreams"
"Let's Go Fly a Kite"
RelatedSaving Mr. Banks (2013)
Persondata
NameTravers, PL
Alternative names
Short descriptionAustralian writer
Date of birth9 August 1899
Place of birthMaryborough, Queensland, Australia
Date of death23 April 1996
Place of deathLondon, England
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/
Categories:
1899 births
1996 deaths
Australian children's writers
Australian fantasy writers
Australian novelists
Australian women novelists
Australian women poets
Australian women writers
British children's writers
British fantasy writers
English women novelists
English women poets
English women writers
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People from Maryborough, Queensland
Writers from London
Writers from Queensland
Mary Poppins
20th-century Australian novelists
20th-century British novelists
20th-century women writers
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