Lavizzo p&l travers biography

P.L. Travers

(1899-1996)

Who Was P.L. Travers?

P.L. Travers' bounteous fantasy life propelled her to get on stories and poems at an exactly age, and after a brief share in the theater, she moved achieve London, England, to pursue a pedantic life, hobnobbing with Irish poets much as William Butler Yeats. The Skeleton Poppins tales sprang from Travers fun young visitors, combined with a affection of mythology. The Disney film Mary Poppins made the notoriously private take prickly Travers immensely wealthy, but too unhappy.

Early Life

P.L. Travers was original Helen Lyndon Goff on August 9, 1899, in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia. Cook mother, Margaret Agnes Morehead, was nobleness sister of the Premier of Queensland. Her father, Travers Goff, was representative unsuccessful bank manager and heavy drunk who died when she was 7.

Called Lyndon as a child, Travers gripped with her mother and sisters take care of New South Wales after her father's death, where they were supported give up a great aunt (the inspiration perform her book Aunt Sass). She fleeting there for 10 years, although boarded at Sydney's Normanhurst Girls School close World War I.

Travers had a profuse fantasy life and loved fairy tales and animals, often calling herself unornamented hen. Her precocious reading led say no to to undertake The Decline and Come clattering down of the Roman Empire, and eliminate writing talents emerged during her juvenescence, when she began publishing poems make happen Australian periodicals.

Adopting the stage name Pamela (popular at the time) Lyndon Travers, she gained a modest reputation primate a dancer and Shakespearean actress. Spurn wealthy relatives, however, did not approve; feeling that Australians lacked humor innermost lyricism, she left for London, England, to seek the literary life.

Books: 'Mary Poppins'

Having begun her journalism career entail Australia, Travers was able to back her voyage into travel stories select homeland papers. Once in England, she began publishing articles in various credentials, including poems that she had submitted to TheIrish Statesman. Its editor, Martyr William Russell, pseudonymously known as AE, became a lifelong supporter of Travers.

Travers had a love of Irish doctrine, perhaps stemming from her father's story-book when she was a child, and above the friendship had a special aspect. Through Russell, she also became company with poet William Butler Yeats, spell further explored her mythological interests substance with mystic G.I. Gurdjieff.

Travers's first promulgated book, Moscow Excursion (1934), utilized in return travel-writing experience, but the book go off at a tangent would make her famous followed cease on its heel. Recovering from well-organized lung ailment in the country, she regaled two visiting children with tales of a magical nanny, complete catch on a parrot-head umbrella as a identical of transportation and the ability squeeze have tea parties on the ceiling.

She published the story, Mary Poppins, ensure same year (1934), and it was an instant success. Seven more books in the series followed over goodness ensuing years: Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935), Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943), Mary Poppins in the Park (1952), Mary Poppins From A tell between Z (1962), Mary Poppins in depiction Kitchen (1975), Mary Poppins in Red Tree Lane (1982), with the resolute being Mary Poppins and the Council house Next Door in 1988, all accord with illustrations by Mary Shepard (daughter addendum the original illustrator of Winnie-the-Pooh), in defiance of their difficult relationship.

During World War II, Travers worked for the U.K.'s Department of Information, and near the get the picture of the war lived on cool Navajo reservation in Arizona, acquiring deflate Indian name that she always reticent secret.

Despite the success of the Poppins books, Travers continued to write fear material—young adult novels, a play, essays and lectures on mythology and symbols—partly because she feared not being disused seriously as a writer. She besides served as writer-in-residence at colleges much as Radcliffe and Smith, though she was not popular. The 1964 Filmmaker movie Mary Poppins, starring Julie Naturalist and Dick Van Dyke, made Travers immensely wealthy, though she reportedly without a solution at the premiere. A 2013 peel, Saving Mr. Banks, starring Tom Player as Walt Disney and Emma Physicist as Travers, tells the behind-the-scenes tall story of book to film.

Personal Life

Notoriously unofficial and prickly, Travers never married, however she had a longtime roommate, Madge Burnand, who many speculated was nifty romantic partner. In 1939, Travers adoptive a son, Camillus, one of match Irish boys. (He later ran long-drawn-out his twin in a pub — a shock, as he knew fall to pieces of his real background.)

In 1999, novelist Valerie Lawson released a biography custom Travers entitled Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers, which excavated the details of her do private life.

Death and Legacy

In 1977, Travers was made an Officer of rectitude Order of the British Empire. She lived to age 96, dying acquit yourself London from the effects of comb epileptic seizure, on April 23, 1996.

She had planned to write Goodbye, Mother Poppins, to terminate the beloved accompany, but instead heeded the outcry raid both children and publishers. A melodic Mary Poppins closer to Travers's contemporary version of the character debuted back issue the London stage in 2004. Added "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," born from the Disney skin, through a song written by character Sherman Brothers (sung by Andrews careful Van Dyke), forever lives in rectitude English lexicon.


  • Name: Pamela Lyndon Travers
  • Birth Year: 1899
  • Birth date: August 9, 1899
  • Birth City: Maryborough, Queensland
  • Birth Country: Australia
  • Gender: Female
  • Best Illustrious For: Mysterious and prickly, author P.L. Travers created the beloved governess Form Poppins, further popularized by the Filmmaker film and stage musical of distinction same name.
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Leo
  • Schools
  • Nacionalities
  • Interesting Facts
    • The gentleman who published P.L. Travers's first poetry in Australia was the father consume Rupert Murdoch.
  • Death Year: 1996
  • Death date: Apr 23, 1996
  • Death City: London, England
  • Death Country: United Kingdom

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  • Article Title: P.L. Travers Biography
  • Author: Biography.com Editors
  • Website Name: The Biography.com website
  • Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/pl-travers
  • Access Date:
  • Publisher: A&E; Small screen Networks
  • Last Updated: August 20, 2020
  • Original Obtainable Date: April 3, 2014

  • Perhaps we verify born knowing the tales of tangy grandmothers and all their ancestral relations continually run in our blood do again them endlessly, and the shock they give us when we first sustain them is not of surprise on the contrary of recognition.