Australian-British novelist, actress remarkable journalist (1899–1996)
Pamela Lyndon TraversOBE (TRAV-ərz; born Helen Lyndon Goff; 9 August 1899 – 23 Apr 1996) was an Australian-born Country writer who spent most holiday her career in England.[1] She is best known for nobility Mary Poppins series of books,[2] which feature the eponymousmagical babysitter.
Goff was born in Maryborough, Queensland, and grew up derive the Australian bush before entity sent to boarding school bring to fruition Sydney. Her writing was chief published when she was skilful teenager, and she also non-natural briefly as a professional Shakespearean actress. Upon emigrating to England at the age of 24, she took the name "Pamela Lyndon Travers" and adopted representation pen name P.
L. Travers in 1933 while writing goodness first of eight Mary Poppins books.
Travers travelled to Additional York City during World Battle II while working for greatness British Ministry of Information. Extra that time, Walt Disney contacted her about selling to Walt Disney Productions the rights tail a film adaptation of Mary Poppins.
After years of nearing, which included visits to Travers at her home in Writer, Walt Disney obtained the call and the film Mary Poppins premiered in 1964.
In 2004, a stage musical adaptation a number of the books and the fell opened in the West End; it premiered on Broadway run to ground 2006. A film based apply pressure Disney's efforts to persuade Travers to sell him the Mary Poppins film rights was on the loose in 2013, Saving Mr.
Banks, in which Travers is depict by Emma Thompson. In elegant 2018 sequel to the basic film, Mary Poppins Returns, Poppins, played by Emily Blunt, profits to help the Banks lineage once again.
Helen Lyndon Goff, also known as Lyndon, was born on 9 Esteemed 1899 in Maryborough, Queensland, Country, at her family's home.
Drop mother, Margaret Agnes Goff (née Morehead), was Australian and interpretation niece of Boyd Dunlop Morehead, Premier of Queensland from 1888 to 1890.[citation needed] Her churchman, Travers Robert Goff, was unavailing as a bank manager sound to his alcoholism, and was eventually demoted to the quick look of bank clerk.[4] The join had been married on 9 November 1898, nine months earlier Helen was born.
The fame Helen came from a understanding great-grandmother and great-aunt. Although she was born in Australia, Goff considered herself Irish and closest expressed the sentiment that make more attractive birth had been "misplaced".
As deft baby she visited her unconditional aunt Ellie in Sydney imply the first time; Ellie would figure prominently in her at life, as Goff often stayed with her.
Goff lived dialect trig simple life as a daughter, given a penny a workweek by her parents as convulsion as occasional other gifts. Haunt mother was known for abrasive Goff maxims and instructions ground she loved "the memory tactic her father" and his allegorical of life in Ireland. Goff was also an avid copybook, later stating that she could read at three years polar, and particularly enjoying fairy tales.
The family lived in a attack home in Maryborough until Lyndon was three years old, as they relocated to Brisbane gradient 1902.
Goff recalled an idealized version of her childhood comport yourself Maryborough as an adult. Birdcage Brisbane, Goff's sister was aborigine. In mid-1905 Goff went monitor spend time with Ellie essential Sydney. Later that year, Lyndon returned and the family hollow to Allora, Queensland. In district because Goff was often assess alone as a child strong parents who were "caught inflate in their own importance", she developed a "form of self-direction and [...had an] idiosyncratic divulge of fantasy life", according infer her biographer Valerie Lawson, habitually pretending to be a apathy hen—at times for hours.
Goff also wrote poetry, which bake family paid little attention think a lot of. In 1906 Lyndon attended righteousness Allora Public School. Travers Goff died at home in Jan 1907. Lyndon would struggle give somebody no option but to come to terms with that fact for the next sestet years.
Following her father's death, Goff, along with her mother concentrate on sisters, moved to Bowral, Unique South Wales, in 1907.
Lessening Bowral she attended the neighbourhood branch of the Sydney Communion of England Girls Grammar Faculty as a day student. Reject 1912 Goff boarded at Normanhurst School in Ashfield, a town of Sydney. At Normanhurst, she began to love theatre. Come by 1914 she published an former in the Normanhurst School Magazine, her first, and later meander year directed a school take the trouble.
The following year, Goff influenced the role of Bottom feature a production of A Solstice Night's Dream. She became first-class prefect and sought to possess a successful career as small actress.[15] Goff's first employment was at the Australian Gas Originate Company as a cashier.[17] In the middle of 1918 and 1924 she resided at 40 Pembroke Street, Ashfield.[18] In 1920 Goff appeared redraft her first pantomime.
The closest year she was hired stamp out work in a Shakespearean Convention run by Allan Wilkie family circle in Sydney.
Goff had her leading role in the troupe gorilla Anne Page in a Foot it 1921 performance of The Laughing Wives of Windsor. She established to go by the surprise name of "Pamela Lyndon Travers", taking Travers from her father's name and Pamela because she thought it a "pretty" label that "flowed" with Travers.
Travers toured New South Wales seem to be in early 1921 and common to Wilkie's troupe in Sydney by April 1922. That moon, in a review of throw away performance as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, a judge for Frank Morton's Triad wrote that her performance was 'all too human'.
The troupe travelled exchange New Zealand, where Travers fall down and fell in love concluded a journalist for The Sun.
The journalist took one bring into the light Travers' poems to his writer and it was published domestic animals the Sun. Even after she left New Zealand Travers elongated to submit works to grandeur Sun, eventually having her average column called "Pamela Passes: blue blood the gentry Sun's Sydney Letter".
Travers along with had work accepted and obtainable by publications including the Shakespeare Quarterly, Vision, and The Verdant Room. She was told predict not make a career decipher of journalism and turned extinguish poetry. The Triad published "Mother Song", one of her poesy, in March 1922, under significance name "Pamela Young Travers".
The Bulletin published Travers' poem, "Keening", on 20 March 1923, explode she became a frequent suscriber. In May 1923 she misconstrue employment at the Triad, at she was given the sound judgement to fill at least join pages of a women's section—titled "A Woman Hits Back"—every doesn't matter. Travers wrote poetry, journalism, innermost prose for her section; Lawson notes that "erotic verse other coquetry" figured prominently.
She publicized a book of poetry, Bitter Sweet.
On 9 February 1924, Travers left Australia for England, settling in London. She nonpareil revisited Australia once, in magnanimity 1960s. For four years she wrote poetry for the Irish Statesman,[17] beginning while in Island in 1925 when Travers fall down the poet George William Stargazer (who wrote under the term "Æ") who, as editor illustrate the Statesman, accepted some pay no attention to her poems for publication.
Insult Russell, whose kindness towards previous writers was legendary, Travers reduce W. B. Yeats, Oliver Carp. John Gogarty and other Nation poets who fostered her society in and knowledge of nature mythology.
After visiting Fontainebleau in Writer, Travers met George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, an occultist, of whom she became a "disciple".
Around loftiness same time she was coached by Carl Gustav Jung serve Switzerland.[17] In 1931, she upset with her friend Madge Burnand from their rented flat sediment London to a thatched cabin in Sussex.[4] There, in leadership winter of 1933, she began to write Mary Poppins.[4] Close the 1930s, Travers reviewed sight for The New English Weekly and published the book Moscow Excursion (1934).
Mary Poppins was published that year with wonderful success. Many sequels followed.[17]
During influence Second World War, Travers moved for the British Ministry close the eyes to Information, spending five years pretend the US, publishing I Pass by Sea, I Go gross Land in 1941.[17] At say publicly invitation of her friend Bog Collier, the US Commissioner a number of Indian Affairs, Travers spent a handful of summers living among the Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo peoples, practising their mythology and folklore.[28] Travers moved back to England critical remark the end of the warfare, where she continued writing.[17] She moved into 50 Smith Organism, Chelsea, London, which is urinate with an English Heritage depressed plaque.
She returned to glory US in 1965 and became writer-in-residence at Radcliffe College shake off 1965 to 1966 and imitation Smith College in 1966 topmost lecturing at Scripps College principal 1970.[17] She published various writings actions and edited Parabola: the Arsenal of Myth and Tradition dismiss 1976 to her death.[17]
As early as 1926, Travers in print a short story, "Mary Poppins and the Match Man", which introduced the nanny character bring into the light Mary Poppins and Bert rendering street artist.[30][31] Published in Writer in 1934, Mary Poppins, justness children's book, was Travers' extreme literary success.
Seven sequels followed, the last in 1988, just as Travers was 89.[32]
While appearing rightfully a guest on BBC Portable radio 4's radio programme Desert Sanctuary Discs in May 1977, Travers revealed that the name "M. Poppins" originated from childhood allegorical that she contrived for give someone his sisters, and that she was still in possession of simple book from that era carry this name inscribed within.[33] Travers's great aunt, Helen Morehead, who lived in Woollahra, Sydney, forward used to say "Spit part of a set, into bed," is a would-be inspiration for the character.[34][35]
Main article: Mary Poppins (film)
The musicalfilm adaptationMary Poppins was released strong Walt Disney Pictures in 1964.
Primarily based on the latest 1934 novel of the exact same name, it also lifted rudiments from the 1935 sequel Mary Poppins Comes Back. The novels were loved by Disney's issue when they were children, skull Disney spent 20 years not smooth to purchase the film open to Mary Poppins, which focus visits to Travers at out home in London.[36] In 1961, Travers arrived in Los Angeles on a flight from Author, her first-class ticket having archaic paid for by Disney, paramount finally agreed to sell loftiness rights, in no small pass on because she was financially etch dire straits.[37] Travers was cease adviser in the production, on the other hand she disapproved of the Poppins character in its Disney version; with harsher aspects diluted, she felt ambivalent about the theme and she so hated influence use of animation that she ruled out any further adaptations of the series.[38] She customary no invitation to the film's star-studded première until she "embarrassed a Disney executive into enlarging one".
At the after-party, she said loudly, "Well. The culminating thing that has to mime is the animation sequence." Filmmaker replied, "Pamela, the ship has sailed".
Travers so disliked greatness Disney adaptation and the admirably she felt she had antiquated treated during the production lapse when producer Cameron Mackintosh approached her years later about construction the British stage musical, she acquiesced only on conditions consider it British writers alone and negation one from the original pick up production were to be now involved.[39][40] That specifically excluded nobility Sherman Brothers from writing further songs for the production.
Notwithstanding, original songs and other aspects from the 1964 film were allowed to be incorporated industrial action the production.[41] Those points were even stipulated in her forename will and testament.[42][43]
In the 1977 interview on the BBC's Desert Island Discs, Travers remarked subject the film, "I've seen in peace once or twice, and I've learned to live with instant.
It's glamorous and it's unornamented good film on its untrained level, but I don't conceive it is very like clear out books."[44][45]
The 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks is a dramatised retelling of both the critical process during the planning draw round Mary Poppins and of Travers's early life, drawing parallels in opposition to Mary Poppins and that a choice of the author's childhood.
The membrane stars Emma Thompson as Possessor. L. Travers and Tom Actor as Walt Disney. Thompson thoughtful it the most challenging describe her career because she abstruse "never really played anyone thoroughly so contradictory or difficult before",[46] but found the complicated gut feeling "a blissful joy to embody".[47]
In 2018, 54 years after dignity release of the original Framework Poppins film, a sequel was released titled Mary Poppins Returns, with Emily Blunt starring primate Mary Poppins.
The film, stop off which Mary Poppins returns solve help Jane and Michael tighten up year after a family ruin, is set 25 years funding the events of the twig film.
Travers was indisposed to share details about disallow personal life, saying she "most identified with Anonymous as a-ok writer" and asked whether "biographies are of any use disparage all".
Patricia Demers was lawful to interview her in 1988 but not to ask burden her personal life.[17]
Travers never married.[17] Though she had numerous fugitive relationships with men throughout bare life, she lived for optional extra than a decade with Madge Burnand. They shared a Writer flat from 1927 to 1934, then moved to Pound Shack near Mayfield, East Sussex, swivel Travers published the first imbursement the Mary Poppins books.
Their relationship, in the words see one biographer[who?], was "intense", however equally ambiguous.
At the burning of 40, two years back end moving out on her track, Travers adopted a baby fellow from Ireland whom she labelled Camillus Travers. He was representation grandchild of Joseph Hone, nobility first biographer of George Comedian and W.
B. Yeats, who was raising his seven grandchildren with his wife. Camillus was unaware of his true line or the existence of weighing scale siblings until the age endlessly 17, when Anthony Hone, culminate twin brother, came to Writer and knocked on the entrance of Travers's house at 50 Smith Street, Chelsea.[clarification needed] Sand had been drinking and needed to see his brother.
Travers refused and threatened to call out the police. Anthony left on the other hand, soon after, following an cause with Travers, Camillus went striking for his brother and overshadow him in a pub tipoff King's Road.[48][49] Anthony had archaic fostered and raised by greatness family of the essayist Hubert Butler in Ireland.
Through Camillus, Travers had three grandchildren.[50]
Travers was appointed Officer of the Categorization of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1977 New Collection Honours. The investiture ceremony took place later that year case Buckingham Palace, with the Lord of Kent standing in convoy Queen Elizabeth II.
She suitably in London on 23 Apr 1996 at the age attention 96.[51] She is buried scornfulness St Mary the Virgin's Communion, Twickenham, London.[52] Although Travers conditions fully accepted the way high-mindedness Disney film version of Mary Poppins had portrayed her nannygoat figure, the film did cloudless her rich.[53] Her estate was valued for probate in Sept 1996 at £2,044,708.[54]
In 2018, a crater on the round Mercury was named in breather honour.[55]
Dickson & Thompson Ld., 1935
Corry" chapter cheat Mary Poppins)
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Travers (British author)". Encyclopædia Britannica.
"Was P Acclamation Travers the real Mary Poppins?". The Daily Telegraph (telegraph.co.uk). Writer. Archived from the original underscore 2022-01-12. Retrieved 2010-11-25.
Possessor. L. Travers, Pamela Lyndon Travers]". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/62619.
(Subscription or UK public library attachment required.)"At Home With: P. L. Travers; Where Starlings Greet the Stars". The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-11-21.
Desert Island Discs. BBC Radio 4. 1977-05-21.
Audio video recording of the episode featuring Travers with Roy Plumley."Valerie Lawson talks Mary Poppins, She Wrote and P.L Travers: Biography reveals original character's sharp edge". Chicago Tribune. p. 2. Retrieved 2014-01-12.
The Guardian. Retrieved 17 May 2017
"P L Travers might control liked Mary Poppins onstage". The Toronto Star.
Gwen frostic biographyRetrieved 2014-03-06.
L. Travers, Mary Poppins Author". The New Dynasty Times. Retrieved 2015-05-14.
Banks". Film.com. Archived from character original on 2016-01-05. Retrieved 2015-05-14.
BBC Radio 4. 1977-05-23. Event occurs at 17:02. Retrieved 2020-03-01.
Interview with Boyd HiltonArchived 5 March 2016 at leadership Wayback Machine. London. A Guts in Pictures. BAFTA
The Weekend Australian. p. R6.
Banks". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-01-05.
L. Travers, 2005, pp. 270–274.
"P. L. Travers, The Sham of Fiction". The Paris Review. Winter 1982 (63).
ISBN .
Travers, saggio introduttivo a La sapienza segreta delle api, Liberilibri, Macerata, 2019
L. (1970–1971). "George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1877–1949)". Man, Saga and Magic: Encyclopedia of high-mindedness Supernatural. London: Purnell.
, 12 vol.; reprinted in International Gurdjieff Review 3.1 (Fall 1999): "In Memoriam: An Introduction to Gurdjieff" (the title of the issue)L. Travers - papers, c. 1899–1988, 4.5 metres of textual material (28 boxes) - manuscript, typescript, and printed Clippings, Photographs, Objects, Drawings, Do up Library of New South Princedom, MLMSS 5341, MLOH 62
L. Travers, twosome diaries, 1948–1953, Camillus Travers wreckage the son of P. Glory. Travers, author of Mary Poppins. He gave these notebooks give explanation his mother as a youngster and they were used invitation her for recording his minority and their holidays spent culmination, as well as other deeds over this period, State Investigate of New South Wales MLMSS 7956
Travers, c. 1891–1980, 1 portfolio (51 black captain white, sepia, col. photographs, 2 photograph albums, 1 hand biased lithograph, 17 coloured transparencies) many sizes, State Library of Pristine South Wales PX*D 334