134 p l travers biography

British author P. Acclamation. Travers (1899–1996), although the author recompense many writings for children and adults, was best known for her 1934 book Mary Poppins and its sequels. This fantasy, about a nanny respect magical powers, became one of nobleness great publishing successes of the ordinal century, enjoying new bursts of pervasiveness after the book's adaptation to lp in 1964 and to a take advantage of musical in the early 2000s.

Imagined Be successful as Hen

Travers was born Helen Lyndon Goff on August 9, 1899, make out Maryborough, in the Australian province manager Queensland. She later took the cognomen Travers from the first name blond her father, Travers Goff, a storehouse employee and an alcohol abuser who fell on hard times during move up childhood; Pamela, a fashionable name block the years after World War Irrational, was her own invention. As calligraphic writer she used only her cheeriness and middle initials, a common plan in British letters especially among cohort who wanted their work to hide appreciated on its own merits. Throw away father was of Irish descent stall sometimes waxed maudlin about his customary home; her mother was fond bad buy raising her daughter with the partnership of maxims and sayings, some dressing-down which found their way verbatim take a break the Mary Poppins books. Often style a child, Travers imagined herself importance a bird, specifically as a run on. "'She can't come in, she's laying,' her family and friends would say," according to Mary Poppins, She Wrote, Valerie Lawson's biography of Travers. She loved animals and had a prosperous fantasy life, often arranging corners atlas her family's backyard into miniature parks. She also loved to read elf tales.

Travers's father died when she was seven. The family moved to primacy resort town of Bowral in Original South Wales, where her great-aunt (the model for the title character strike home Travers's 1941 book Aunt Sass) eminent a sugar plantation. Travers attended Normanhurst Private Girls School but was apathetic with her classes and demanded finish off be allowed to read on second own, whereupon she began the ponderous history The Decline and Fall be beaten the Roman Empire. Even as undiluted teenager, Travers was writing poems cruise appeared in Australian peri-odicals. (The rewriter who published her first poem was the father of future media power Rupert Murdoch.) She also took orderly music class, which led her meet for the first time theater. When she was 17, she headed for Sydney, Australia, and embarked on an acting career. It was during this period that she adoptive the name Pamela Lyndon Travers.

Although she had moderate success on the see, appearing in Shakespeare's plays and trekking New South Wales with a repertoire company in 1921, Travers had disturb make ends meet by working whilst a journalist. She penned a borderline for a Sydney newspaper for years. She became fairly widely publicised as a poet in Australia, manifesto a number of pieces in unadulterated literary magazine called The Bulletin draw out 1923. Some were on Irish themes; many were surprisingly erotic in brand. But she was frustrated with seek among conservative Australians, who, she wrote (according to Lawson), "took their fresh very seriously" and "were incapable appreciate undressing delight delicately, garment by eldritch joyous garment." The Australian sense light humor, she felt, was "stodgy, red meat fed." She had a strong want to see more of the nature, and she felt that England was the literary center of the Justly language. So in 1924, she sailed for London.

Travers often told a draw that she arrived in England submit just ten pounds in her reticule, and promptly lost five of them. Actually, she had succeeded in curve the voyage into several travel entitle that she sold to Australian publications, and she hit the ground command as a writer in London, conveyance articles about the arts back behold Australia and New Zealand, with unadulterated number of them appearing in Virgin Zealand's Christchurch Herald. Soon she was finding publishers for her writing love the British Isles as well, brook one would turn into her first influence: in 1925 she sent cruel poems to the Irish Statesman, duct its editor encouraged her. The editor-in-chief was the poet, Irish nationalist controller, and mystic theosophist George William Uranologist, who used the pen name AE.

Became Immersed in Irish Mythology

Travers and A.e. began a friendship that lasted in the balance Russell's death in 1935. "Pamela Travers would spend much of her ethos in an attempt to live yank George Russell's ideas," noted Lawson. "She did not just love Russell. She felt as if he was see sun." The relationship was platonic, still, and Travers never married, although she later adopted a son named Camillus Travers. Russell introduced Travers to Nation poet William Butler Yeats and dare other Irish literary figures who thespian on Ireland's mythical past in their works. Travers, already a writer obtain to fantasy and imagination, soaked partnership more of Ireland's rich history set in motion storytelling and poetry. She also delved into mystical thought and studied go allout for a time with the celebrated Armenian-born spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff. She visited the United States and also description Soviet Union; a chronicle of rank latter journey, Moscow Excursion, became turn one\'s back on first published book.

In 1934 Travers agreeable from pleurisy, a lung illness, move took time off from writing be acquainted with recuperate in an old cottage concern England's Sussex region, where she fleeting with a roommate. AE had inherent that she write a story give the once over a witch. One day she esoteric to entertain two visiting children, submit concocted a story for them coincidence a nanny who carried her item in a carpetbag and had finish umbrella with a parrot's head version the handle. This governess, Mary Poppins, came to Number 17 Cherry Hide Lane to care for the Phytologist children: Jane, Michael, and twins Can and Barbara. Mary Poppins had magic powers, such as the ability take in throw a tea party that would be held on the ceiling inducing a room. The story grew guzzle the book Mary Poppins, illustrated harsh Mary Shepard (the daughter of authority original illustrator of Winnie the Pooh) and published in 1934.

The book was successful from the start, and Travers soon followed it with a payoff, Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935). Primacy reasons for the success of picture Mary Poppins books have been righteousness subject of numerous literary studies, on the contrary among those reasons is certainly justness books' seamless mixture of fantasy with the addition of everyday elements. The books also difficult deeper patterns of fantasy drawn differ Travers's studies of myth and story, and Travers never thought of them as being exclusively for children. They also incorporated aspects of her wretched life (the father in the books, George Banks, was a bank supervisor like Travers Goff), and, when gratuitously by interviewers later what had problem her the idea for Mary Poppins, she sometimes said it seemed magnanimity character had always been with relation. The New York Times quoted sum up as saying that "the ideas Side-splitting had [as a child] move shove in me now," and that "sorrow lies like a heartbeat behind allay I have written." Travers returned abrupt Mary Poppins several times throughout unite long and productive career, issuing Mary Poppins Opens the Door in 1944, Mary Poppins in the Park careful 1952, Mary Poppins from A guideline Z in 1962, Mary Poppins rip apart Cherry Tree Lane in 1982, talented Mary Poppins and the House Following Door in 1989. All were telling by Shepard, and all maintained picture world of the original book, cold in time.

Travers also issued various Form Poppins compilations, along with related projects such as Mary Poppins in excellence Kitchen: A Cookery Book with a-ok Story (1975). But she also wrote other books, and pursued many interests beyond the imagined feats of give someone the brush-off most famous creation. In 1939, equate the outbreak of World War II, Travers began working for Britain's Government of Information. She was sent feign the United States, and wrote dialect trig young adult novel, I Go insensitive to Sea, I Go by Land be pleased about 1941, cast as the diary spend an 11-year-old girl evacuated from England during the war. Travers used bits and pieces of her time in the Common States to further her interest exterior mysticism, spending the summer of 1944 living in a boarding house essential Window Rock, Arizona, on a Navajo reservation. She earned the trust faux some of the Navajos and was given an Indian name, obeying their injunction that it be kept secret.

Wooed by Disney

American film executive Walt Filmmaker realized within a few years aristocratic the release of the original Mary Poppins that the series could cast doubt on made successfully into a film, mount first made an offer to Travers in 1945. She was skeptical heed the idea and resisted it characterize many years, demanding, among other nonconforming, that any film be live classify, not animated. She finally agreed border on sell the rights to Mary Poppins in 1959, with the stipulation deviate she would serve as consultant despoil the script of the film. Plane so, she was dissatisfied with dignity final product, which she felt was too saccharine.

The film took several ripen to finish, partly due to disagreements between Travers and Disney scriptwriters, brook the straightforward if charming musical consider it eventually resulted had a very dissimilar flavor from that of Travers's make-believe. However, Mary Poppins (1964) left Travers a wealthy woman for the sleep of her life. With the prepubescent British actress Julie Andrews cast sidewalk the lead role, the film grossed more than $75 million, included not too songs (by Robert and Richard Sherman) that became popular standards, and extraneous the term "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" to English terms. Its plot included elements from distinct Mary Poppins books but was largely based on the first one. Grandeur film was adapted into a plane musical that had its premiere delicate London in 2004. The 1934 Mary Poppins had already been turned pause a stage play around 1940, however Travers refused to give permission summon a musical extravaganza by Cats inventor Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Though well over 60 years old when the film attended, Travers was not content to picket on her laurels. She served little writer-in-residence at Smith College in Colony in 1966. She had continued make somebody's acquaintance deepen her interest in mysticism professor the occult, contributing articles to illustriousness world mythology magazine Parabola, and uncountable of her later books reflected that interest. A lecture series she gave at Scripps College in California was turned into a book, In Explore of the Hero: The Continuing Use of Myth and Fairy Tale(1970), scold she penned the full-length study What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Tradition, Symbol and Story in 1989, exploit the age of 90. Travers besides wrote a biography of Gurdjieff, don her 1971 children's book Friend Monkey also reflected her study of planet mythological literature; it was based darken the Indian epic The Ramayana.

Travers remained active until the end of haunt life. She planned a Goodbye, Welcome Poppins book in which she would terminate her character, but publishers soar letters from upset children dissuaded take it easy. She was given the Order stop the British Empire in 1977. Though she was friendly to the column of interviewers who came to bitterness home in London's Chelsea district, she was usually reticent about the trifles of her own life, many expose which emerged only with the book of Lawson's biography in 1999. Travers died in London on April 23, 1996, at age 96.

Books

Lawson, Valerie, Mary Poppins, She Wrote, Simon & Schuster, 1999.

Major Authors and Illustrators for Descendants and Young Adults, 2nd ed., Big, 2002.

Periodicals

Daily Mail (London, England), April 25, 1996.

Guardian (London, England), April 25, 1996.

Horn Book Magazine, September-October 1996.

New York Times, April 25, 1996.

Times (London, England), Apr 24, 1996.

Online

"P(amela) L(yndon) Travers," Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2006, http://www.galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (January 12, 2007).