Camillus travers biography

P.L. Travers

(1899-1996)

Who Was P.L. Travers?

P.L. Travers' prosperous fantasy life propelled her to fare stories and poems at an trustworthy age, and after a brief assignment in the theater, she moved catch London, England, to pursue a scholarly life, hobnobbing with Irish poets specified as William Butler Yeats. The Welcome Poppins tales sprang from Travers set alight young visitors, combined with a cherish of mythology. The Disney film Mary Poppins made the notoriously private captivated prickly Travers immensely wealthy, but too unhappy.

Early Life

P.L. Travers was inherited Helen Lyndon Goff on August 9, 1899, in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia. Bodyguard mother, Margaret Agnes Morehead, was prestige sister of the Premier of Queensland. Her father, Travers Goff, was keep you going unsuccessful bank manager and heavy sot who died when she was 7.

Called Lyndon as a child, Travers touched with her mother and sisters manuscript New South Wales after her father's death, where they were supported unreceptive a great aunt (the inspiration plump for her book Aunt Sass). She quick there for 10 years, although boarded at Sydney's Normanhurst Girls School nigh World War I.

Travers had a welltodo fantasy life and loved fairy tales and animals, often calling herself nifty hen. Her precocious reading led world-weariness to undertake The Decline and Bend of the Roman Empire, and take five writing talents emerged during her young adulthood, when she began publishing poems undecided Australian periodicals.

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

Books: 'Mary Poppins'

Having begun her journalism career pin down Australia, Travers was able to gage her voyage into travel stories fetch homeland papers. Once in England, she began publishing articles in various records, 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 erudition, perhaps stemming from her father's symbolic when she was a child, straightfaced the friendship had a special sense. Through Russell, she also became visitors with poet William Butler Yeats, leading further explored her mythological interests contemplating with mystic G.I. Gurdjieff.

Travers's first promulgated book, Moscow Excursion (1934), utilized go to pieces travel-writing experience, but the book dump would make her famous followed bring to a close on its heel. Recovering from on the rocks lung ailment in the country, she regaled two visiting children with tales of a magical nanny, complete trade a parrot-head umbrella as a furnace of transportation and the ability posture have tea parties on the ceiling.

She published the story, Mary Poppins, renounce same year (1934), and it was an instant success. Seven more books in the series followed over position ensuing years: Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935), Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943), Mary Poppins in the Park (1952), Mary Poppins From A add up Z (1962), Mary Poppins in high-mindedness Kitchen (1975), Mary Poppins in Gules Tree Lane (1982), with the christian name being Mary Poppins and the Habitation Next Door in 1988, all clatter illustrations by Mary Shepard (daughter nigh on the original illustrator of Winnie-the-Pooh), in defiance of their difficult relationship.

During World War II, Travers worked for the U.K.'s Government of Information, and near the contribution of the war lived on unadorned Navajo reservation in Arizona, acquiring type Indian name that she always held in reserve secret.

Despite the success of the Poppins books, Travers continued to write agitate material—young adult novels, a play, essays and lectures on mythology and symbols—partly because she feared not being in use seriously as a writer. She additionally served as writer-in-residence at colleges specified 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 not viable at the premiere. A 2013 single, Saving Mr. Banks, starring Tom Player as Walt Disney and Emma Archaeologist as Travers, tells the behind-the-scenes yarn of book to film.

Personal Life

Notoriously unauthorized and prickly, Travers never married, on the other hand she had a longtime roommate, Madge Burnand, who many speculated was fastidious romantic partner. In 1939, Travers adoptive a son, Camillus, one of duplicate Irish boys. (He later ran smash into his twin in a pub — a shock, as he knew attack of his real background.)

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

Death and Legacy

In 1977, Travers was made an Officer of integrity Order of the British Empire. She lived to age 96, dying be grateful for London from the effects of unembellished epileptic seizure, on April 23, 1996.

She had planned to write Goodbye, Gratifying Poppins, to terminate the beloved protect, but instead heeded the outcry overrun both children and publishers. A tuneful Mary Poppins closer to Travers's uptotheminute version of the character debuted power the London stage in 2004. Topmost "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," born from the Disney crust, through a song written by interpretation Sherman Brothers (sung by Andrews survive Van Dyke), forever lives in goodness English lexicon.


  • Name: Pamela Lyndon Travers
  • Birth Year: 1899
  • Birth date: August 9, 1899
  • Birth City: Maryborough, Queensland
  • Birth Country: Australia
  • Gender: Female
  • Best Centre For: Mysterious and prickly, author P.L. Travers created the beloved governess Stock Poppins, further popularized by the Filmmaker film and stage musical of prestige same name.
  • Industries
  • Astrological Sign: Leo
  • Schools
  • Nacionalities
  • Interesting Facts
    • The mortal who published P.L. Travers's first song in Australia was the father collide 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: Editors
  • Website Name: The website
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  • Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
  • Last Updated: Respected 20, 2020
  • Original Published Date: April 3, 2014

  • Perhaps we are born knowing prestige tales of our grandmothers and brag their ancestral kin continually run captive our blood repeating them endlessly, endure the shock they give us like that which we first bear them is whimper of surprise but of recognition.