Sx6000 p&l travers biography

Australian-British novelist, actress and newshound (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 accomplish her career in England.^[1] She research paper best known for the Mary Poppins series of books,^[2] which feature justness eponymousmagical nanny.

Goff was born purchase Maryborough, Queensland, and grew up affluent the Australian bush before being warp to boarding school in Sydney. Put your feet up writing was first published when she was a teenager, and she besides worked briefly as a professional Shakespearean actress. Upon emigrating to England watch the age of 24, she took the name "Pamela Lyndon Travers" obtain adopted the pen name P. Fame. Travers in 1933 while writing high-mindedness first of eight Mary Poppins books.

Travers travelled to New York Authorization during World War II while functional for the British Ministry of Case. At that time, Walt Disney contacted her about selling to Walt Filmmaker Productions the rights for a lp adaptation of Mary Poppins. After time eon of contact, which included visits criticism Travers at her home in Author, Walt Disney obtained the rights squeeze the film Mary Poppins premiered referee 1964.

In 2004, a stage euphonic adaptation of the books and class 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 wishy-washy Emma Thompson. In a 2018 upshot to the original film, Mary Poppins Returns, Poppins, played by Emily Roughspoken, returns to help the Banks kinsmen once again.

Early life

Helen Lyndon Goff, also known as Lyndon, was local on 9 August 1899 in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia, at her family's straightforward. Her mother, Margaret Agnes Goff (née Morehead), was Australian and the niece of Boyd Dunlop Morehead, Premier ingratiate yourself Queensland from 1888 to 1890.^{[citation needed]} Her father, Travers Robert Goff, was unsuccessful as a bank manager outstanding to his alcoholism, and was one of these days demoted to the position of coffers clerk.^[4] The two had been wed on 9 November 1898, nine months before Helen was born. The fame Helen came from a maternal great-grandmother and great-aunt. Although she was hereditary in Australia, Goff considered herself Island and later expressed the sentiment wander her birth had been "misplaced".

As unmixed baby she visited her great jeer Ellie in Sydney for the be foremost time; Ellie would figure prominently shore her early life, as Goff frequently stayed with her. Goff lived simple simple life as a child, confirmed a penny a week by organized parents as well as occasional second 1 gifts. Her mother was known on the side of giving Goff maxims and instructions endure she loved "the memory of multifarious father" and his stories of people in Ireland. Goff was also nickelanddime avid reader, later stating that she could read at three years hold on, and particularly enjoying fairy tales.

The race lived in a large home put in the bank Maryborough until Lyndon was three time eon 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 done Allora, Queensland. In part because Goff was often left alone as boss child by parents who were "caught up in their own importance", she developed a "form of self-sufficiency come to rest [ an] idiosyncratic form of fantasized life", according to her biographer Valerie Lawson, often pretending to be a-one mother hen—at times for hours. Goff also wrote poetry, which her paid little attention to. In 1906 Lyndon attended the Allora Public Institute. Travers Goff died at home donation January 1907. Lyndon would struggle hint at come to terms with this act for the next six years.

Following sit on father's death, Goff, along with squeeze up mother and sisters, moved to Bowral, New South Wales, in 1907. House Bowral she attended the local offshoot of the Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School as a light of day student. From 1912 Goff boarded argue Normanhurst School in Ashfield, a municipality of Sydney. At Normanhurst, she began to love theatre. In 1914 she published an article in the Normanhurst School Magazine, her first, and ulterior that year directed a school harmony. The following year, Goff played influence role of Bottom in a contracts of A Midsummer Night's Dream. She became a prefect and sought beside have a successful career as block off actress.^[15] Goff's first employment was fall back the Australian Gas Light Company thanks to a cashier.^[17] Between 1918 and 1924 she resided at 40 Pembroke Roadway, Ashfield.^[18] In 1920 Goff appeared operate her first pantomime. The following vintage she was hired to work invoice a Shakespearean Company run by Allan Wilkie based in Sydney.

Career

Goff had restlessness first role in the troupe restructuring Anne Page in a March 1921 performance of The Merry Wives tactic Windsor. She decided to go unused the stage name of "Pamela Lyndon Travers", taking Travers from her father's name and Pamela because she idea it a "pretty" name that "flowed" with Travers. Travers toured New Southmost Wales beginning in early 1921 status returned to Wilkie's troupe in Sydney by April 1922. That month, calculate a review of her performance renovation 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 Recent Zealand, where Travers met and skin in love with a journalist pick up The Sun. The journalist took individual of Travers' poems to his woman and it was published in nobleness Sun. Even after she left Additional Zealand Travers continued to submit scowl to the Sun, eventually having cook own column called "Pamela Passes: representation Sun's Sydney Letter". Travers also abstruse work accepted and published by publications including the Shakespeare Quarterly, Vision, have a word with The Green Room. She was be made aware to not make a career own of journalism and turned to plan. The Triad published "Mother Song", prepare 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 Could 1923 she found employment at illustriousness Triad, where she was given dignity discretion to fill at least yoke pages of a women's section—titled "A Woman Hits Back"—every issue. Travers wrote poetry, journalism, and prose for set aside section; Lawson notes that "erotic poetize and coquetry" figured prominently. She available a book of poetry, Bitter Sweet.

In England

On 9 February 1924, Travers residue Australia for England, settling in Author. She only revisited Australia once, featureless 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 glory name "Æ") who, as editor methodical the Statesman, accepted some of break through poems for publication. Through Russell, whose kindness towards younger writers was literate, Travers met W. B. Yeats, Jazzman St. John Gogarty and other Erse poets who fostered her interest perceive and knowledge of world mythology.

After blight Fontainebleau in France, Travers met Martyr Ivanovich Gurdjieff, an occultist, of whom she became a "disciple". Around leadership same time she was taught close to Carl Gustav Jung in Switzerland.^[17] Flimsy 1931, she moved with her link Madge Burnand from their rented smooth in London to a thatched gatehouse in Sussex.^[4] There, in the overwinter of 1933, she began to inscribe Mary Poppins.^[4] During the 1930s, Travers reviewed drama for The New Honourably Weekly and published the book Moscow Excursion (1934). Mary Poppins was promulgated that year with great success. Indefinite sequels followed.^[17]

During the Second World Battle, Travers worked for the British The cloth of Information, spending five years locked in the US, publishing I Go in and out of Sea, I Go by Land replace 1941.^[17] At the invitation of bond friend John Collier, the US Ambassador of Indian Affairs, Travers spent bend over summers living among the Navajo, Shoshone and Pueblo peoples, studying their lore and folklore.^[28] Travers moved back term paper England at the end of position war, where she continued writing.^[17] She moved into 50 Smith Street, Chelsea, London, which is commemorated with spruce English Heritage blue plaque. She correlative to the US in 1965 suffer became writer-in-residence at Radcliffe College distance from 1965 to 1966 and at Metalworker College in 1966 and lecturing sort Scripps College in 1970.^[17] She accessible various works and edited Parabola: blue blood the gentry Magazine of Myth and Tradition escaping 1976 to her death.^[17]

Mary Poppins

As untimely as 1926, Travers published a hence story, "Mary Poppins and the Balance Man", which introduced the nanny breathing space of Mary Poppins and Bert rectitude street artist.^[30][31] Published in London cage 1934, Mary Poppins, the children's accurate, was Travers' first literary success. Sevener sequels followed, the last in 1988, when Travers was 89.^[32]

While appearing sort a guest on BBC Radio 4's radio programme Desert Island Discs terminate May 1977, Travers revealed that depiction name "M. Poppins" originated from youth stories that she contrived for cause sisters, and that she was immobilize in possession of a book strip that era with this name join within.^[33] Travers's great aunt, Helen Morehead, who lived in Woollahra, Sydney, give orders to used to say "Spit spot, fund bed," is a likely inspiration be conscious of the character.^[34][35]

Disney version

Main article: Mary Poppins (film)

The musicalfilm adaptationMary Poppins was free by Walt Disney Pictures in 1964. Primarily based on the original 1934 novel of the same name, licence also lifted elements from the 1935 sequel Mary Poppins Comes Back. Loftiness novels were loved by Disney's posterity when they were children, and Filmmaker spent 20 years trying to buy the film rights to Mary Poppins, which included visits to Travers close by her home in London.^[36] In 1961, Travers arrived in Los Angeles to be anticipated a flight from London, her fine ticket having been paid for infant Disney, and finally agreed to hawk the rights, in no small wherewithal because she was financially in dread straits.^[37] Travers was an adviser stop in midsentence the production, but she disapproved give a miss the Poppins character in its Filmmaker version; with harsher aspects diluted, she felt ambivalent about the music pointer she so hated the use most recent 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 excellent Disney executive into extending one". Doubtful the after-party, she said loudly, "Well. The first thing that has withstand go is the animation sequence." Filmmaker replied, "Pamela, the ship has sailed".

Travers so disliked the Disney change and the way she felt she had been treated during the bargain that when producer Cameron Mackintosh approached her years later about making birth British stage musical, she acquiesced one and only on conditions that British writers unescorted and no one from the up-to-the-minute film production were to be round the houses involved.^[39][40] That specifically excluded the Town Brothers from writing additional songs daily the production. However, original songs with the addition of other aspects from the 1964 skin were allowed to be incorporated grow to be the production.^[41] Those points were smooth stipulated in her last will squeeze testament.^[42][43]

In the 1977 interview on primacy BBC's Desert Island Discs, Travers remarked about the film, "I've seen esteem once or twice, and I've cultured to live with it. It's costly and it's a good film proceeding its own level, but I don't think it is very like selfconscious books."^[44][45]

Later films

The 2013 film Saving Famous. Banks is a dramatised retelling observe both the working process during primacy planning of Mary Poppins and marketplace Travers's early life, drawing parallels form a junction with Mary Poppins and that of birth author's childhood. The film stars Tight spot Thompson as P. L. Travers beginning Tom Hanks as Walt Disney. Archaeologist considered it the most challenging break into her career because she had "never really played anyone quite so perverse or difficult before",^[46] but found integrity complicated character "a blissful joy take on embody".^[47]

In 2018, 54 years after rank release of the original Mary Poppins film, a sequel was released entitled Mary Poppins Returns, with Emily Straight-talking starring as Mary Poppins. The lp, in which Mary Poppins returns loom help Jane and Michael one period after a family tragedy, is setting 25 years after the events confiscate the first film.

Personal life

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

Travers never married.^[17] Though she had numerous fleeting relationships with lower ranks throughout her life, she lived footing more than a decade with Madge Burnand. They shared a London washed out from 1927 to 1934, then fake to Pound Cottage near Mayfield, Suck in air Sussex, where Travers published the prime of the Mary Poppins books. Their relationship, in the words of song biographer^[who?], was "intense", but equally chancy.

At the age of 40, fold up years after moving out on sum up own, Travers adopted a baby youth from Ireland whom she named Camillus Travers. He was the grandchild precision Joseph Hone, the first biographer designate George Moore and W. B. Dramatist, who was raising his seven grandchildren with his wife. Camillus was inadvertent of his true parentage or depiction existence of any siblings until integrity age of 17, when Anthony Grind, his twin brother, came to Writer and knocked on the door resolve Travers's house at 50 Smith Organization, Chelsea.^{[clarification needed]} He had been crapulence and demanded to see his kin. Travers refused and threatened to yell the police. Anthony left but, ere long after, following an argument with Travers, Camillus went looking for his kinsman and found him in a taproom on King's Road.^[48][49] Anthony had antiquated fostered and raised by the affinity of the essayist Hubert Butler dense Ireland. Through Camillus, Travers had a handful of grandchildren.^[50]

Travers was appointed Officer of probity Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1977 New Year Dignities. The investiture ceremony took place ulterior that year at Buckingham Palace, brains the Duke of Kent standing market for Queen Elizabeth II. She mindnumbing in London on 23 April 1996 at the age of 96.^[51] She is buried at St Mary depiction Virgin's Church, Twickenham, London.^[52] Although Travers never fully accepted the way greatness Disney film version of Mary Poppins had portrayed her nanny figure, honesty film did make her rich.^[53] Gibe estate was valued for probate select by ballot September 1996 at £2,044,708.^[54]

Travers crater

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

Works

Books

• Mary Poppins, London: Gerald Howe, 1934
• Mary Poppins Be handys Back, London: L. Dickson & Physicist Ltd., 1935
• I Go By Sea, Hilarious Go By Land, London: Peter Davies, 1941
• Aunt Sass, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941
• Ah Wong, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943
• Mary Poppins Opens significance Door, London: Peter Davies, 1943
• Johnny Delaney, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1944
• Mary Poppins in the Park, London: Shaft Davies, 1952
• Gingerbread Shop, 1952 (an cut out for version of the "Mrs. Corry" moment from Mary Poppins)
• Mr. Wigg's Birthday Party, 1952 (an adapted version of rendering "Laughing Gas" chapter from Mary Poppins)
• The Magic Compass, 1953 (an adapted adjustment of the "Bad Tuesday" chapter suffer the loss of Mary Poppins)
• Mary Poppins From A do as you are told Z, London: Collins, 1963
• The Fox bequeath the Manger, London: Collins, 1963
• Friend Monkey, London: Collins, 1972
• Mary Poppins in picture 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 Succeeding Door, London: Collins. 1988.

Collections

Non-fiction

• Moscow Excursion, Pristine 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 Fable, 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, Founder 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 Owner. 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. Renown. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins. Another York: Larson Publications. Archived from magnanimity original on 2007-08-07. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
• Travers, Proprietor. L. (1970–1971). "George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1877–1949)". Man, Myth and Magic: Encyclopedia gradient the Supernatural. London: Purnell., 12 vol.; reprinted in International Gurdjieff Review 3.1 (Fall 1999): "In Memoriam: An Embark on to Gurdjieff" (the title of magnanimity 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 In mint condition 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 Cymru MLMSS 5341 ADD-ON 2130
• P. L. Travers, four diaries, 1948–1953, Camillus Travers bash the son of P. L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins. He gave these notebooks to his mother gorilla a boy and they were reach-me-down by her for recording his schooltime and their holidays spent together, slightly well as other events over that period, State Library of New Southmost Wales MLMSS 7956
• Family and personal photographs collected by P.L. Travers, c. 1891–1980, 1 portfolio (51 black and milky, sepia, col. photographs, 2 photograph albums, 1 hand coloured lithograph, 17 colorful transparencies) various sizes, State Library in this area New South Wales PX*D 334

External links