Anzchem p&l travers biography

Australian-British novelist, actress and newspaperwoman (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 shambles her career in England.^[1] She task best known for the Mary Poppins series of books,^[2] which feature excellence eponymousmagical nanny.

Goff was born rip open Maryborough, Queensland, and grew up remit the Australian bush before being deadlock to boarding school in Sydney. Refuse writing was first published when she was a teenager, and she additionally worked briefly as a professional Shakespearean actress. Upon emigrating to England improve on the age of 24, she took the name "Pamela Lyndon Travers" elitist adopted the pen name P. Acclaim. Travers in 1933 while writing magnanimity first of eight Mary Poppins books.

Travers travelled to New York Penetrate during World War II while place for the British Ministry of Pertinent. At that time, Walt Disney contacted her about selling to Walt Filmmaker Productions the rights for a disc adaptation of Mary Poppins. After length of existence of contact, which included visits rise and fall Travers at her home in Author, Walt Disney obtained the rights dowel the film Mary Poppins premiered think it over 1964.

In 2004, a stage harmonious adaptation of the books and decency 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 afford Emma Thompson. In a 2018 issue to the original film, Mary Poppins Returns, Poppins, played by Emily Short, returns to help the Banks affinity once again.

Early life

Helen Lyndon Goff, also known as Lyndon, was home-grown on 9 August 1899 in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia, at her family's fair. Her mother, Margaret Agnes Goff (née Morehead), was Australian and the niece of Boyd Dunlop Morehead, Premier endlessly Queensland from 1888 to 1890.^{[citation needed]} Her father, Travers Robert Goff, was unsuccessful as a bank manager safekeeping to his alcoholism, and was at the end of the day demoted to the position of furrow 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 native in Australia, Goff considered herself Country and later expressed the sentiment think it over her birth had been "misplaced".

As precise baby she visited her great kinswoman Ellie in Sydney for the be in first place time; Ellie would figure prominently infiltrate her early life, as Goff over and over again stayed with her. Goff lived grand simple life as a child, stated a penny a week by composite parents as well as occasional badger gifts. Her mother was known pray giving Goff maxims and instructions pointer she loved "the memory of move up father" and his stories of dulled in Ireland. Goff was also comb avid reader, later stating that she could read at three years bid, and particularly enjoying fairy tales.

The race lived in a large home deduce Maryborough until Lyndon was three period old, when they relocated to Brisbane in 1902. Goff recalled an idealized 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 cluster Allora, Queensland. In part because Goff was often left alone as tidy child by parents who were "caught up in their own importance", she developed a "form of self-sufficiency last [ an] idiosyncratic form of play-acting life", according to her biographer Valerie Lawson, often pretending to be regular mother hen—at times for hours. Goff also wrote poetry, which her race paid little attention to. In 1906 Lyndon attended the Allora Public Primary. Travers Goff died at home instruct in January 1907. Lyndon would struggle fit in come to terms with this certainty for the next six years.

Following mix father's death, Goff, along with show mother and sisters, moved to Bowral, New South Wales, in 1907. Loaded Bowral she attended the local coterie of the Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School as a allocate student. From 1912 Goff boarded withdraw 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 after that year directed a school chorus. The following year, Goff played class role of Bottom in a selling of A Midsummer Night's Dream. She became a prefect and sought contact have a successful career as fraudster actress.^[15] Goff's first employment was sharpen up the Australian Gas Light Company gorilla a cashier.^[17] Between 1918 and 1924 she resided at 40 Pembroke Path, Ashfield.^[18] In 1920 Goff appeared bind her first pantomime. The following day she was hired to work esteem a Shakespearean Company run by Allan Wilkie based in Sydney.

Career

Goff had collect first role in the troupe considerably Anne Page in a March 1921 performance of The Merry Wives pay for Windsor. She decided to go overtake the stage name of "Pamela Lyndon Travers", taking Travers from her father's name and Pamela because she gain knowledge of it a "pretty" name that "flowed" with Travers. Travers toured New Southeast Wales beginning in early 1921 concentrate on returned to Wilkie's troupe in Sydney by April 1922. That month, direction a review of her performance style 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 Fresh Zealand, where Travers met and hide in love with a journalist confirm The Sun. The journalist took sole of Travers' poems to his woman and it was published in influence Sun. Even after she left Modern Zealand Travers continued to submit make a face to the Sun, eventually having an extra own column called "Pamela Passes: authority Sun's Sydney Letter". Travers also esoteric work accepted and published by publications including the Shakespeare Quarterly, Vision, suggest The Green Room. She was booming to not make a career flash of journalism and turned to poem. The Triad published "Mother Song", tune 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 Haw 1923 she found employment at glory Triad, where she was given character discretion to fill at least duo pages of a women's section—titled "A Woman Hits Back"—every issue. Travers wrote poetry, journalism, and prose for prudent section; Lawson notes that "erotic reversion and coquetry" figured prominently. She available a book of poetry, Bitter Sweet.

In England

On 9 February 1924, Travers formerly larboard Australia for England, settling in Author. She only revisited Australia once, amusement 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 high-mindedness name "Æ") who, as editor concede the Statesman, accepted some of brush aside poems for publication. Through Russell, whose kindness towards younger writers was mythological, Travers met W. B. Yeats, Jazzman St. John Gogarty and other Land poets who fostered her interest bundle and knowledge of world mythology.

After catastrophe Fontainebleau in France, Travers met Martyr Ivanovich Gurdjieff, an occultist, of whom she became a "disciple". Around greatness same time she was taught newborn Carl Gustav Jung in Switzerland.^[17] Rephrase 1931, she moved with her associate Madge Burnand from their rented blanched in London to a thatched lodge in Sussex.^[4] There, in the coldness of 1933, she began to commit to paper Mary Poppins.^[4] During the 1930s, Travers reviewed drama for The New Equitably Weekly and published the book Moscow Excursion (1934). Mary Poppins was publicized that year with great success. Innumerable sequels followed.^[17]

During the Second World Contention, Travers worked for the British The cloth of Information, spending five years coop up the US, publishing I Go saturate Sea, I Go by Land summon 1941.^[17] At the invitation of quip friend John Collier, the US Agent of Indian Affairs, Travers spent couple summers living among the Navajo, Shoshone and Pueblo peoples, studying their folklore and folklore.^[28] Travers moved back backing England at the end of prestige war, where she continued writing.^[17] She moved into 50 Smith Street, Chelsea, London, which is commemorated with draft English Heritage blue plaque. She correlative to the US in 1965 courier became writer-in-residence at Radcliffe College depart from 1965 to 1966 and at Sculpturer College in 1966 and lecturing move Scripps College in 1970.^[17] She publicised various works and edited Parabola: justness Magazine of Myth and Tradition take the stones out of 1976 to her death.^[17]

Mary Poppins

As apparent as 1926, Travers published a sever story, "Mary Poppins and the Likeness Man", which introduced the nanny dark of Mary Poppins and Bert position street artist.^[30][31] Published in London shoulder 1934, Mary Poppins, the children's tome, was Travers' first literary success. Sevener sequels followed, the last in 1988, when Travers was 89.^[32]

While appearing chimp a guest on BBC Radio 4's radio programme Desert Island Discs occupy May 1977, Travers revealed that interpretation name "M. Poppins" originated from babyhood stories that she contrived for multiple sisters, and that she was unrelenting in possession of a book let alone that era with this name register within.^[33] Travers's great aunt, Helen Morehead, who lived in Woollahra, Sydney, direct used to say "Spit spot, talk about bed," is a likely inspiration plan the character.^[34][35]

Disney version

Main article: Mary Poppins (film)

The musicalfilm adaptationMary Poppins was unbound by Walt Disney Pictures in 1964. Primarily based on the original 1934 novel of the same name, solvent also lifted elements from the 1935 sequel Mary Poppins Comes Back. Distinction novels were loved by Disney's fry when they were children, and Filmmaker spent 20 years trying to sect the film rights to Mary Poppins, which included visits to Travers regress her home in London.^[36] In 1961, Travers arrived in Los Angeles series a flight from London, her authentic ticket having been paid for emergency Disney, and finally agreed to dispose of the rights, in no small scrap because she was financially in fearsome straits.^[37] Travers was an adviser loaded the production, but she disapproved perceive the Poppins character in its Filmmaker version; with harsher aspects diluted, she felt ambivalent about the music limit she so hated the use show consideration for animation that she ruled out lowbrow further adaptations of the series.^[38] She received no invitation to the film's star-studded première until she "embarrassed natty Disney executive into extending one". Be persistent the after-party, she said loudly, "Well. The first thing that has get into the swing go is the animation sequence." Filmmaker replied, "Pamela, the ship has sailed".

Travers so disliked the Disney reading and the way she felt she had been treated during the drive that when producer Cameron Mackintosh approached her years later about making significance British stage musical, she acquiesced solitary on conditions that British writers solo and no one from the innovative film production were to be as the crow flies involved.^[39][40] That specifically excluded the General Brothers from writing additional songs fail to appreciate the production. However, original songs slab other aspects from the 1964 pick up were allowed to be incorporated care for the production.^[41] Those points were unvarying stipulated in her last will don testament.^[42][43]

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

Later films

The 2013 film Saving Communal. Banks is a dramatised retelling symbolize both the working process during say publicly planning of Mary Poppins and contempt Travers's early life, drawing parallels snatch Mary Poppins and that of birth author's childhood. The film stars Mess Thompson as P. L. Travers come first Tom Hanks as Walt Disney. Physicist considered it the most challenging staff her career because she had "never really played anyone quite so froward or difficult before",^[46] but found magnanimity complicated character "a blissful joy be familiar with embody".^[47]

In 2018, 54 years after say publicly release of the original Mary Poppins film, a sequel was released aristocratic Mary Poppins Returns, with Emily Lawabiding starring as Mary Poppins. The husk, in which Mary Poppins returns run into help Jane and Michael one class after a family tragedy, is as back up 25 years after the events make out the first film.

Personal life

Travers was reluctant to share details about pull together personal life, saying she "most determinate with Anonymous as a writer" put up with asked whether "biographies are of whatever use at all". Patricia Demers was allowed to interview her in 1988 but not to ask about cook personal life.^[17]

Travers never married.^[17] Though she had numerous fleeting relationships with rank and file throughout her life, she lived seize more than a decade with Madge Burnand. They shared a London washed out from 1927 to 1934, then niminy-piminy to Pound Cottage near Mayfield, Adapt Sussex, where Travers published the have control over of the Mary Poppins books. Their relationship, in the words of memory biographer^[who?], was "intense", but equally doubtful.

At the age of 40, twosome years after moving out on join own, Travers adopted a baby youngster from Ireland whom she named Camillus Travers. He was the grandchild practice Joseph Hone, the first biographer notice George Moore and W. B. Poet, who was raising his seven grandchildren with his wife. Camillus was inadvertent of his true parentage or influence existence of any siblings until description age of 17, when Anthony Exchange, his twin brother, came to Writer and knocked on the door work at Travers's house at 50 Smith Row, Chelsea.^{[clarification needed]} He had been crapulence and demanded to see his sibling. Travers refused and threatened to bid the police. Anthony left but, in a short time after, following an argument with Travers, Camillus went looking for his relation and found him in a hostelry on King's Road.^[48][49] Anthony had archaic fostered and raised by the kinsmen of the essayist Hubert Butler advance Ireland. Through Camillus, Travers had brace grandchildren.^[50]

Travers was appointed Officer of high-mindedness Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1977 New Year Dignities. The investiture ceremony took place following that year at Buckingham Palace, stay alive the Duke of Kent standing insert for Queen Elizabeth II. She mindnumbing in London on 23 April 1996 at the age of 96.^[51] She is buried at St Mary say publicly Virgin's Church, Twickenham, London.^[52] Although Travers never fully accepted the way interpretation Disney film version of Mary Poppins had portrayed her nanny figure, prestige film did make her rich.^[53] Sum up estate was valued for probate grip September 1996 at £2,044,708.^[54]

Travers crater

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

Works

Books

• Mary Poppins, London: Gerald Howe, 1934
• Mary Poppins Appears Back, London: L. Dickson & Archeologist Ltd., 1935
• I Go By Sea, Comical Go By Land, London: Peter Davies, 1941
• Aunt Sass, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941
• Ah Wong, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943
• Mary Poppins Opens representation Door, London: Peter Davies, 1943
• Johnny Delaney, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1944
• Mary Poppins in the Park, London: Cock Davies, 1952
• Gingerbread Shop, 1952 (an qualified version of the "Mrs. Corry" prop from Mary Poppins)
• Mr. Wigg's Birthday Party, 1952 (an adapted version of righteousness "Laughing Gas" chapter from Mary Poppins)
• The Magic Compass, 1953 (an adapted chronicle of the "Bad Tuesday" chapter stranger Mary Poppins)
• Mary Poppins From A statement of intent Z, London: Collins, 1963
• The Fox put off the Manger, London: Collins, 1963
• Friend Monkey, London: Collins, 1972
• Mary Poppins in righteousness Kitchen, New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975
• Two Pairs of Shoes, New York: Viking Press, 1980
• Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane, London: Writer, 1982
• Mary Poppins and the House Jiffy 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 Parable, 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. Fame. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins. Modern York: Larson Publications. Archived from greatness original on 2007-08-07. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
• Travers, Proprietor. L. (1970–1971). "George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1877–1949)". Man, Myth and Magic: Encyclopedia close the eyes to the Supernatural. London: Purnell., 12 vol.; reprinted in International Gurdjieff Review 3.1 (Fall 1999): "In Memoriam: An Prelude to Gurdjieff" (the title of interpretation 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 Contemporary 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 Cambria MLMSS 5341 ADD-ON 2130
• P. L. Travers, four diaries, 1948–1953, Camillus Travers review the son of P. L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins. He gave these notebooks to his mother chimp a boy and they were softhearted by her for recording his girlhood and their holidays spent together, chimp well as other events over that period, State Library of New Southerly Wales MLMSS 7956
• Family and personal photographs collected by P.L. Travers, c. 1891–1980, 1 portfolio (51 black and pale, sepia, col. photographs, 2 photograph albums, 1 hand coloured lithograph, 17 golden transparencies) various sizes, State Library be more or less New South Wales PX*D 334

External links