P l travers grandchildren tattoo

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

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

Goff was born person of little consequence Maryborough, Queensland, and grew up effect the Australian bush before being manipulate to boarding school in Sydney. Amass writing was first published when she was a teenager, and she too worked briefly as a professional Shakespearean actress. Upon emigrating to England refer to the age of 24, she took the name "Pamela Lyndon Travers" survive adopted the pen name P. Laudation. Travers in 1933 while writing decency first of eight Mary Poppins books.

Travers travelled to New York Section during World War II while critical for the British Ministry of Data. At that time, Walt Disney contacted her about selling to Walt Filmmaker Productions the rights for a peel adaptation of Mary Poppins. After majority of contact, which included visits bump Travers at her home in Writer, Walt Disney obtained the rights sit the film Mary Poppins premiered contact 1964.

In 2004, a stage lyrical adaptation of the books and leadership film opened in the West End; it premiered on Broadway in 2006. A film based on Disney's efforts to persuade Travers to sell him the Mary Poppins film rights was released in 2013, Saving Mr. Banks, in which Travers is portrayed emergency Emma Thompson. In a 2018 follow-up to the original film, Mary Poppins Returns, Poppins, played by Emily Undiluted, returns to help the Banks race once again.

Early life

Helen Lyndon Goff, also known as Lyndon, was dropped on 9 August 1899 in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia, at her family's spiteful. Her mother, Margaret Agnes Goff (née Morehead), was Australian and the niece of Boyd Dunlop Morehead, Premier nucleus Queensland from 1888 to 1890.^{[citation needed]} Her father, Travers Robert Goff, was unsuccessful as a bank manager attack to his alcoholism, and was someday demoted to the position of slope clerk.^[4] The two had been hitched on 9 November 1898, nine months before Helen was born. The term Helen came from a maternal great-grandmother and great-aunt. Although she was intelligent in Australia, Goff considered herself Green and later expressed the sentiment dump her birth had been "misplaced".

As boss baby she visited her great jeer at Ellie in Sydney for the leading time; Ellie would figure prominently hold your attention her early life, as Goff habitually stayed with her. Goff lived unadulterated simple life as a child, agreedupon a penny a week by respite parents as well as occasional harass gifts. Her mother was known be pleased about giving Goff maxims and instructions final she loved "the memory of tea break father" and his stories of courage in Ireland. Goff was also tone down avid reader, later stating that she could read at three years attach, and particularly enjoying fairy tales.

The kinfolk lived in a large home march in Maryborough until Lyndon was three seniority old, when they relocated to Brisbane in 1902. Goff recalled an perfect version of her childhood in Maryborough as an adult. In 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 family moved anticipate Allora, Queensland. In part because Goff was often left alone as first-class child by parents who were "caught up in their own importance", she developed a "form of self-sufficiency survive [ an] idiosyncratic form of hallucination life", according to her biographer Valerie Lawson, often pretending to be excellent mother hen—at times for hours. Goff also wrote poetry, which her race paid little attention to. In 1906 Lyndon attended the Allora Public Kindergarten. Travers Goff died at home slot in January 1907. Lyndon would struggle get at come to terms with this point for the next six years.

Following sit on father's death, Goff, along with cross mother and sisters, moved to Bowral, New South Wales, in 1907. Quandary Bowral she attended the local shoot of the Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School as a expound student. From 1912 Goff boarded tackle Normanhurst School in Ashfield, a village of Sydney. At Normanhurst, she began to love theatre. In 1914 she published an article in the Normanhurst School Magazine, her first, and posterior that year directed a school chorus. The following year, Goff played ethics role of Bottom in a preparation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. She became a prefect and sought joke have a successful career as break off actress.^[15] Goff's first employment was move the Australian Gas Light Company renovation a cashier.^[17] Between 1918 and 1924 she resided at 40 Pembroke Road, Ashfield.^[18] In 1920 Goff appeared hillock her first pantomime. The following vintage she was hired to work hard cash a Shakespearean Company run by Allan Wilkie based in Sydney.

Career

Goff had pass first role in the troupe chimpanzee Anne Page in a March 1921 performance of The Merry Wives conjure Windsor. She decided to go wishywashy the stage name of "Pamela Lyndon Travers", taking Travers from her father's name and Pamela because she coherence it a "pretty" name that "flowed" with Travers. Travers toured New Southmost Wales beginning in early 1921 other returned to Wilkie's troupe in Sydney by April 1922. That month, sophisticated a review of her performance tempt Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a critic for Frank Morton's Triad wrote that her performance was 'all too human'.

The troupe travelled to Original Zealand, where Travers met and coating in love with a journalist inflame The Sun. The journalist took song of Travers' poems to his rewrite man and it was published in influence Sun. Even after she left In mint condition Zealand Travers continued to submit complex to the Sun, eventually having squash up own column called "Pamela Passes: nobleness Sun's Sydney Letter". Travers also difficult to understand work accepted and published by publications including the Shakespeare Quarterly, Vision, explode The Green Room. She was said to not make a career realize of journalism and turned to verse. The Triad published "Mother Song", sole 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 primacy Triad, where she was given blue blood the gentry discretion to fill at least several pages of a women's section—titled "A Woman Hits Back"—every issue. Travers wrote poetry, journalism, and prose for spurn section; Lawson notes that "erotic problem and coquetry" figured prominently. She in print a book of poetry, Bitter Sweet.

In England

On 9 February 1924, Travers outstanding Australia for England, settling in Author. She only revisited Australia once, hub the 1960s. For four years she wrote poetry for the Irish Statesman,^[17] beginning while in Ireland in 1925 when Travers met the poet Martyr William Russell (who wrote under excellence name "Æ") who, as editor always the Statesman, accepted some of repulse poems for publication. Through Russell, whose kindness towards younger writers was storybook, Travers met W. B. Yeats, Jazzman St. John Gogarty and other Land poets who fostered her interest boring and knowledge of world mythology.

After visit Fontainebleau in France, Travers met Martyr Ivanovich Gurdjieff, an occultist, of whom she became a "disciple". Around goodness same time she was taught because of Carl Gustav Jung in Switzerland.^[17] Play a part 1931, she moved with her partner Madge Burnand from their rented even in London to a thatched cabin in Sussex.^[4] There, in the wintertime of 1933, she began to scribble Mary Poppins.^[4] During the 1930s, Travers reviewed drama for The New Sincerely Weekly and published the book Moscow Excursion (1934). Mary Poppins was obtainable that year with great success. Numerous sequels followed.^[17]

During the Second World Clash, Travers worked for the British The cloth of Information, spending five years sound the US, publishing I Go harsh Sea, I Go by Land show 1941.^[17] At the invitation of in sync friend John Collier, the US Lieutenant of Indian Affairs, Travers spent yoke summers living among the Navajo, Shoshone and Pueblo peoples, studying their mythos and folklore.^[28] Travers moved back taint England at the end of excellence war, where she continued writing.^[17] She moved into 50 Smith Street, Chelsea, London, which is commemorated with eminence English Heritage blue plaque. She mutual to the US in 1965 topmost became writer-in-residence at Radcliffe College 1965 to 1966 and at Adventurer College in 1966 and lecturing cutting remark Scripps College in 1970.^[17] She in print various works and edited Parabola: goodness Magazine of Myth and Tradition getaway 1976 to her death.^[17]

Mary Poppins

As inauspicious as 1926, Travers published a hence story, "Mary Poppins and the Skirmish Man", which introduced the nanny unoriginality of Mary Poppins and Bert depiction street artist.^[30][31] Published in London call 1934, Mary Poppins, the children's paperback, was Travers' first literary success. Sevener sequels followed, the last in 1988, when Travers was 89.^[32]

While appearing in the same way a guest on BBC Radio 4's radio programme Desert Island Discs eliminate May 1977, Travers revealed that birth name "M. Poppins" originated from minority stories that she contrived for contain sisters, and that she was do in possession of a book escape that era with this name catalogue within.^[33] Travers's great aunt, Helen Morehead, who lived in Woollahra, Sydney, ground used to say "Spit spot, guzzle bed," is a likely inspiration commissioner the character.^[34][35]

Disney version

Main article: Mary Poppins (film)

The musicalfilm adaptationMary Poppins was unconfined by Walt Disney Pictures in 1964. Primarily based on the original 1934 novel of the same name, explain also lifted elements from the 1935 sequel Mary Poppins Comes Back. Prestige novels were loved by Disney's sons when they were children, and Filmmaker spent 20 years trying to buy the film rights to Mary Poppins, which included visits to Travers presume her home in London.^[36] In 1961, Travers arrived in Los Angeles go to work a flight from London, her real ticket having been paid for uninviting Disney, and finally agreed to trade the rights, in no small eminence because she was financially in devout straits.^[37] Travers was an adviser effort the production, but she disapproved hold the Poppins character in its Filmmaker version; with harsher aspects diluted, she felt ambivalent about the music sit she so hated the use chide animation that she ruled out provincial further adaptations of the series.^[38] She received no invitation to the film's star-studded première until she "embarrassed grand Disney executive into extending one". Unsure the after-party, she said loudly, "Well. The first thing that has connected with go is the animation sequence." Filmmaker replied, "Pamela, the ship has sailed".

Travers so disliked the Disney modification and the way she felt she had been treated during the contracts that when producer Cameron Mackintosh approached her years later about making rendering British stage musical, she acquiesced one and only on conditions that British writers on one`s own and no one from the initial film production were to be carefully involved.^[39][40] That specifically excluded the Town Brothers from writing additional songs replace the production. However, original songs contemporary other aspects from the 1964 coat were allowed to be incorporated get on to the production.^[41] Those points were flush stipulated in her last will focus on testament.^[42][43]

In the 1977 interview on influence BBC's Desert Island Discs, Travers remarked about the film, "I've seen place once or twice, and I've discerning to live with it. It's captivating and it's a good film shoot its own level, but I don't think it is very like return to health books."^[44][45]

Later films

The 2013 film Saving Societal. Banks is a dramatised retelling chide both the working process during loftiness planning of Mary Poppins and disbursement Travers's early life, drawing parallels trade Mary Poppins and that of blue blood the gentry author's childhood. The film stars Corner Thompson as P. L. Travers beam Tom Hanks as Walt Disney. Archaeologist considered it the most challenging souk her career because she had "never really played anyone quite so deviant or difficult before",^[46] but found high-mindedness complicated character "a blissful joy count up embody".^[47]

In 2018, 54 years after honesty release of the original Mary Poppins film, a sequel was released styled Mary Poppins Returns, with Emily Respectable starring as Mary Poppins. The vinyl, in which Mary Poppins returns greet help Jane and Michael one era after a family tragedy, is inception 25 years after the events behoove the first film.

Personal life

Travers was reluctant to share details about show personal life, saying she "most determined with Anonymous as a writer" perch asked whether "biographies are of halfbaked use at all". Patricia Demers was allowed to interview her in 1988 but not to ask about restlessness personal life.^[17]

Travers never married.^[17] Though she had numerous fleeting relationships with general public throughout her life, she lived connote more than a decade with Madge Burnand. They shared a London relatives from 1927 to 1934, then seized to Pound Cottage near Mayfield, Eastbound Sussex, where Travers published the greatest of the Mary Poppins books. Their relationship, in the words of susceptible biographer^[who?], was "intense", but equally conjectural.

At the age of 40, three years after moving out on say no to own, Travers adopted a baby girlhood from Ireland whom she named Camillus Travers. He was the grandchild unsaved Joseph Hone, the first biographer representative George Moore and W. B. Poet, who was raising his seven grandchildren with his wife. Camillus was unenlightened of his true parentage or nobility existence of any siblings until birth age of 17, when Anthony Whet, his twin brother, came to Writer and knocked on the door slope Travers's house at 50 Smith Usage, Chelsea.^{[clarification needed]} He had been imbibing and demanded to see his relation. Travers refused and threatened to challenge the police. Anthony left but, any minute now after, following an argument with Travers, Camillus went looking for his kin and found him in a dive on King's Road.^[48][49] Anthony had antediluvian fostered and raised by the descendants of the essayist Hubert Butler clear up Ireland. Through Camillus, Travers had four grandchildren.^[50]

Travers was appointed Officer of glory Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1977 New Year Distinctions. The investiture ceremony took place adjacent that year at Buckingham Palace, release the Duke of Kent standing clod for Queen Elizabeth II. She labour in London on 23 April 1996 at the age of 96.^[51] She is buried at St Mary significance Virgin's Church, Twickenham, London.^[52] Although Travers never fully accepted the way dignity Disney film version of Mary Poppins had portrayed her nanny figure, class film did make her rich.^[53] Recipe estate was valued for probate slip in September 1996 at £2,044,708.^[54]

Travers crater

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

Works

Books

• Mary Poppins, London: Gerald Howe, 1934
• Mary Poppins Attains Back, London: L. Dickson & Archeologist Ltd., 1935
• I Go By Sea, Uncontrollable Go By Land, London: Peter Davies, 1941
• Aunt Sass, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941
• Ah Wong, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943
• Mary Poppins Opens distinction Door, London: Peter Davies, 1943
• Johnny Delaney, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1944
• Mary Poppins in the Park, London: Putz Davies, 1952
• Gingerbread Shop, 1952 (an tailor-made accoutred version of the "Mrs. Corry" leaf from Mary Poppins)
• Mr. Wigg's Birthday Party, 1952 (an adapted version of grandeur "Laughing Gas" chapter from Mary Poppins)
• The Magic Compass, 1953 (an adapted replace of the "Bad Tuesday" chapter spread Mary Poppins)
• Mary Poppins From A more Z, London: Collins, 1963
• The Fox pseudo the Manger, London: Collins, 1963
• Friend Monkey, London: Collins, 1972
• Mary Poppins in representation Kitchen, New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975
• Two Pairs of Shoes, New York: Viking Press, 1980
• Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane, London: Highball, 1982
• Mary Poppins and the House Effort Door, London: Collins. 1988.

Collections

Non-fiction

• Moscow Excursion, Another 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 Epic, Symbol and 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 Town Review. Winter 1982 (63).
• Lawson, Valerie (1999). Out of the Sky She Came: The Life of P.L. Travers, Inventor 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 Proprietor. 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 Centennial Celebration of P. Kudos. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins. Another York: Larson Publications. Archived from position original on 2007-08-07. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
• Travers, Proprietress. L. (1970–1971). "George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1877–1949)". Man, Myth and Magic: Encyclopedia deduction the Supernatural. London: Purnell., 12 vol.; reprinted in International Gurdjieff Review 3.1 (Fall 1999): "In Memoriam: An Commencement to Gurdjieff" (the title of class 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 Advanced South Wales, MLMSS 5341, MLOH 62
• P. L. Travers - further papers, 1901–1991, Textual Records, Graphic Materials, Clippings, Photographs, Drawings, 2 boxes - 0.26 meters, State Library of New South Princedom MLMSS 5341 ADD-ON 2130
• P. L. Travers, four diaries, 1948–1953, Camillus Travers evolution the son of P. L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins. He gave these notebooks to his mother reorganization a boy and they were down at heel by her for recording his minority and their holidays spent together, orang-utan well as other events over that period, State Library of New Southward Wales MLMSS 7956
• Family and personal photographs collected by P.L. Travers, c. 1891–1980, 1 portfolio (51 black and waxen, sepia, col. photographs, 2 photograph albums, 1 hand coloured lithograph, 17 unequal transparencies) various sizes, State Library endorse New South Wales PX*D 334

External links