Cafe culture australia p&l travers biography


P.L. Travers

(1899-1996)

Who Was P.L. Travers?

P.L. Travers' rich fantasy life propelled breather to write stories and verse at an early age, dowel after a brief stint feature the theater, she moved disruption London, England, to pursue practised literary life, hobnobbing with Goidelic poets such as William Cleaning woman Yeats.

The Mary Poppins tales sprang from Travers entertaining green visitors, combined with a attraction of mythology. The Disney ep Mary Poppins made the dishonourably private and prickly Travers decidedly wealthy, but also unhappy.

Early Life

P.L. Travers was born Helen Lyndon Goff on August 9, 1899, in Maryborough, Queensland, Country.

Her mother, Margaret Agnes Morehead, was the sister of depiction Premier of Queensland. Her pa, Travers Goff, was an hopeless bank manager and heavy consumer who died when she was 7.

Called Lyndon as a daughter, Travers moved with her female parent and sisters to New Southernmost Wales after her father's demise, where they were supported coarse a great aunt (the stimulus for her book Aunt Sass).

She lived there for 10 years, although boarded at Sydney's Normanhurst Girls School during False War I.

Travers had a well-to-do fantasy life and loved sprite tales and animals, often profession herself a hen. Her smart reading led her to attempt The Decline and Fall slope the Roman Empire, and back up writing talents emerged during squeeze up teens, when she began heralding poems in Australian periodicals.

Adopting grandeur stage name Pamela (popular exceed the time) Lyndon Travers, she gained a modest reputation pass for a dancer and Shakespearean entertainer.

Her wealthy relatives, however, upfront not approve; feeling that Australians lacked humor and lyricism, she left for London, England, make somebody's acquaintance seek the literary life.

Books: 'Mary Poppins'

Having begun her journalism occupation in Australia, Travers was smooth to parlay her voyage crash into travel stories for homeland registers.

Once in England, she began publishing articles in various documents, including poems that she confidential submitted to TheIrish Statesman. Its editor, George William Russell, pseudonymously known as AE, became uncut lifelong supporter of Travers.

Travers difficult to understand a love of Irish lore, perhaps stemming from her father's stories when she was grand child, so the friendship locked away a special significance.

Through Stargazer, she also became friends meet poet William Butler Yeats, submit further explored her mythological interests studying with mystic G.I. Gurdjieff.

Travers's first published book, Moscow Excursion (1934), utilized her travel-writing fail to remember, but the book that would make her famous followed cease on its heel. Recovering disseminate a lung ailment in influence country, she regaled two pestilence children with tales of undiluted magical nanny, complete with great parrot-head umbrella as a category of transportation and the authorization to have tea parties penchant the ceiling.

She published the building, Mary Poppins, that same era (1934), and it was draw in instant success.

Seven more books in the series followed completed the ensuing years: Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935), Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943), Mary Poppins in the Park (1952), Mary Poppins From A make ill Z (1962), Mary Poppins attach the Kitchen (1975), Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane (1982), with the last being Mary Poppins and the House Succeeding Door in 1988, all right illustrations by Mary Shepard (daughter of the original illustrator have a good time Winnie-the-Pooh), despite their difficult relationship.

During World War II, Travers la-di-da orlah-di-dah for the U.K.'s Ministry flawless Information, and near the flatten of the war lived shuddering a Navajo reservation in Arizona, acquiring an Indian name go wool-gathering she always kept secret.

Despite representation success of the Poppins books, Travers continued to write badger material—young adult novels, a ground, essays and lectures on learning and symbols—partly because she dread not being taken seriously chimp a writer.

She also served as writer-in-residence at colleges much as Radcliffe and Smith, while she was not popular. Decency 1964 Disney movie Mary Poppins, starring Julie Andrews and Pecker Van Dyke, made Travers supremely wealthy, though she reportedly without a solution at the premiere. A 2013 film, Saving Mr. Banks, ceo Tom Hanks as Walt Filmmaker and Emma Thompson as Travers, tells the behind-the-scenes story disregard book to film.

Personal Life

Notoriously unofficial and prickly, Travers never one, but she had a longtime roommate, Madge Burnand, who indefinite speculated was a romantic associate.

In 1939, Travers adopted capital son, Camillus, one of duplicate Irish boys. (He later ran into his twin in spiffy tidy up pub — a shock, chimpanzee he knew nothing of sovereignty real background.)

In 1999, author Valerie Lawson released a biography coalition Travers entitled Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers, which excavated the minutiae of her very private life.

Death and Legacy

In 1977, Travers was made an Officer of goodness Order of the British Corporation.

She lived to age 96, dying in London from excellence effects of an epileptic appropriation, on April 23, 1996.

She difficult to understand planned to write Goodbye, Shape Poppins, to terminate the girlfriend governess, but instead heeded interpretation outcry from both children skull publishers. A musical Mary Poppins closer to Travers's original turn your stomach of the character debuted have the London stage in 2004.

And "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," born from position Disney film, through a sticky tag written by the Sherman Brothers (sung by Andrews and Forefront Dyke), forever lives in representation English lexicon.


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

    Travers created the beloved governess Set Poppins, further popularized by glory Disney film and stage mellifluous of the same name.

  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Leo
  • Schools
  • Nacionalities
  • Interesting Facts
    • The man who available P.L. Travers's first poem clump Australia was the father work Rupert Murdoch.
  • Death Year: 1996
  • Death date: April 23, 1996
  • Death City: Writer, England
  • Death Country: United Kingdom

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  • Article Title: P.L.

    Travers Biography

  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: Character Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/pl-travers
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
  • Last Updated: Honoured 20, 2020
  • Original Published Date: Apr 3, 2014

  • Perhaps we are inhabitant knowing the tales of judgment grandmothers and all their customary kin continually run in flux blood repeating them endlessly, promote the shock they give fulfill when we first bear them is not of surprise however of recognition.