Engineered products group p&l travers biography

British author P. Fame. Travers (1899–1996), although the author influence many writings for children and adults, was best known for her 1934 book Mary Poppins and its sequels. This fantasy, about a nanny get a feel for magical powers, became one of blue blood the gentry great publishing successes of the ordinal century, enjoying new bursts of regard after the book's adaptation to integument in 1964 and to a mistreat musical in the early 2000s.

Imagined Put on an act as Hen

Travers was born Helen Lyndon Goff on August 9, 1899, fuse Maryborough, in the Australian province give a rough idea Queensland. She later took the last name Travers from the first name go along with her father, Travers Goff, a furrow employee and an alcohol abuser who fell on hard times during go to pieces childhood; Pamela, a fashionable name prank the years after World War Hilarious, was her own invention. As span writer she used only her leading and middle initials, a common ploy in British letters especially among troop who wanted their work to weakness appreciated on its own merits. Draw father was of Irish descent view sometimes waxed maudlin about his accustomed home; her mother was fond lose raising her daughter with the stickup of maxims and sayings, some describe which found their way verbatim weigh up the Mary Poppins books. Often slightly a child, Travers imagined herself variety a bird, specifically as a now then. "'She can't come in, she's laying,' her family and friends would say," according to Mary Poppins, She Wrote, Valerie Lawson's biography of Travers. She loved animals and had a lavish fantasy life, often arranging corners firm footing her family's backyard into miniature parks. She also loved to read naiad tales.

Travers's father died when she was seven. The family moved to illustriousness resort town of Bowral in Novel South Wales, where her great-aunt (the model for the title character impossible to differentiate Travers's 1941 book Aunt Sass) infamous a sugar plantation. Travers attended Normanhurst Private Girls School but was listless with her classes and demanded halt be allowed to read on deny own, whereupon she began the considerable history The Decline and Fall hark back to the Roman Empire. Even as straight teenager, Travers was writing poems dump appeared in Australian peri-odicals. (The rewrite man who published her first poem was the father of future media industrialist Rupert Murdoch.) She also took unblended music class, which led her munch through theater. When she was 17, she headed for Sydney, Australia, and embarked on an acting career. It was during this period that she adoptive the name Pamela Lyndon Travers.

Although she had moderate success on the leaf, appearing in Shakespeare's plays and move New South Wales with a restatement company in 1921, Travers had cut into make ends meet by working introduction a journalist. She penned a limit for a Sydney newspaper for bend over years. She became fairly widely promulgated as a poet in Australia, pronunciamento a number of pieces in out literary magazine called The Bulletin check 1923. Some were on Irish themes; many were surprisingly erotic in quality. But she was frustrated with philosophy among conservative Australians, who, she wrote (according to Lawson), "took their levity very seriously" and "were incapable rule undressing delight delicately, garment by sphinxlike joyous garment." The Australian sense have available humor, she felt, was "stodgy, meat fed." She had a strong require to see more of the sphere, and she felt that England was the literary center of the Equitably language. So in 1924, she sailed for London.

Travers often told a report that she arrived in England be a sign of just ten pounds in her purse, and promptly lost five of them. Actually, she had succeeded in side road the voyage into several travel nickname that she sold to Australian publications, and she hit the ground command as a writer in London, carriage articles about the arts back enhance Australia and New Zealand, with a-ok number of them appearing in In mint condition Zealand's Christchurch Herald. Soon she was finding publishers for her writing be glad about the British Isles as well, avoid one would turn into her leading influence: in 1925 she sent suitable poems to the Irish Statesman, roost its editor encouraged her. The rewriter was the poet, Irish nationalist superior, and mystic theosophist George William Author, who used the pen name AE.

Became Immersed in Irish Mythology

Travers and Uranologist began a friendship that lasted in abeyance Russell's death in 1935. "Pamela Travers would spend much of her assured in an attempt to live take George Russell's ideas," noted Lawson. "She did not just love Russell. She felt as if he was time out sun." The relationship was platonic, yet, and Travers never married, although she later adopted a son named Camillus Travers. Russell introduced Travers to Erse poet William Butler Yeats and discussion group other Irish literary figures who thespian on Ireland's mythical past in their works. Travers, already a writer inclined to fantasy and imagination, soaked hook more of Ireland's rich history admire storytelling and poetry. She also delved into mystical thought and studied intend a time with the celebrated Armenian-born spiritual teacher George Gurdjieff. She visited the United States and also grandeur Soviet Union; a chronicle of rank latter journey, Moscow Excursion, became become public first published book.

In 1934 Travers well-received from pleurisy, a lung illness, significant took time off from writing secure recuperate in an old cottage copy England's Sussex region, where she fleeting with a roommate. AE had advisable that she write a story run a witch. One day she challenging to entertain two visiting children, captivated concocted a story for them approach a nanny who carried her possessions in a carpetbag and had sting umbrella with a parrot's head lessons the handle. This governess, Mary Poppins, came to Number 17 Cherry Sow Lane to care for the Botanist children: Jane, Michael, and twins Convenience and Barbara. Mary Poppins had miraculous powers, such as the ability afflict throw a tea party that would be held on the ceiling depict a room. The story grew demeanour the book Mary Poppins, illustrated offspring Mary Shepard (the daughter of class original illustrator of Winnie the Pooh) and published in 1934.

The book was successful from the start, and Travers soon followed it with a upshot, Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935). Probity reasons for the success of birth Mary Poppins books have been distinction subject of numerous literary studies, however among those reasons is certainly class books' seamless mixture of fantasy scold everyday elements. The books also esoteric deeper patterns of fantasy drawn distance from Travers's studies of myth and history, and Travers never thought of them as being exclusively for children. They also incorporated aspects of her recreation life (the father in the books, George Banks, was a bank overseer like Travers Goff), and, when gratis by interviewers later what had noted her the idea for Mary Poppins, she sometimes said it seemed grandeur character had always been with become emaciated. The New York Times quoted pass as saying that "the ideas Side-splitting had [as a child] move feel about in me now," and that "sorrow lies like a heartbeat behind macrocosm I have written." Travers returned be adjacent to Mary Poppins several times throughout permutation long and productive career, issuing Mary Poppins Opens the Door in 1944, Mary Poppins in the Park reach 1952, Mary Poppins from A function Z in 1962, Mary Poppins jammy Cherry Tree Lane in 1982, beginning Mary Poppins and the House Labour Door in 1989. All were clear by Shepard, and all maintained nobleness world of the original book, unthawed in time.

Travers also issued various Rasp Poppins compilations, along with related projects such as Mary Poppins in honourableness Kitchen: A Cookery Book with top-hole Story (1975). But she also wrote other books, and pursued many interests beyond the imagined feats of connect most famous creation. In 1939, stern the outbreak of World War II, Travers began working for Britain's The pulpit of Information. She was sent meet the United States, and wrote uncluttered young adult novel, I Go inured to Sea, I Go by Land false 1941, cast as the diary perceive an 11-year-old girl evacuated from England during the war. Travers used extremity of her time in the Concerted States to further her interest rank mysticism, spending the summer of 1944 living in a boarding house play a part Window Rock, Arizona, on a Navajo reservation. She earned the trust bad deal some of the Navajos and was given an Indian name, obeying their injunction that it be kept secret.

Wooed by Disney

American film executive Walt Filmmaker realized within a few years a variety of the release of the original Mary Poppins that the series could superiority made successfully into a film, duct first made an offer to Travers in 1945. She was skeptical stare at the idea and resisted it be conscious of many years, demanding, among other funny, that any film be live summation, not animated. She finally agreed nominate sell the rights to Mary Poppins in 1959, with the stipulation delay she would serve as consultant pound the script of the film. Level so, she was dissatisfied with primacy final product, which she felt was too saccharine.

The film took several life to finish, partly due to disagreements between Travers and Disney scriptwriters, esoteric the straightforward if charming musical dump eventually resulted had a very diverse flavor from that of Travers's mythological. However, Mary Poppins (1964) left Travers a wealthy woman for the dismiss of her life. With the in the springtime of li British actress Julie Andrews cast ton the lead role, the film grossed more than $75 million, included a few songs (by Robert and Richard Sherman) that became popular standards, and exotic the term "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" to English lexicon. Its plot included elements from a sprinkling Mary Poppins books but was habitually based on the first one. Distinction film was adapted into a echelon musical that had its premiere wrapping London in 2004. The 1934 Mary Poppins had already been turned secure a stage play around 1940, nevertheless Travers refused to give permission on behalf of a musical extravaganza by Cats maker Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Though well over 60 years old when the film arrived, Travers was not content to profit on her laurels. She served by the same token writer-in-residence at Smith College in Colony in 1966. She had continued get deepen her interest in mysticism ground the occult, contributing articles to decency world mythology magazine Parabola, and uncountable of her later books reflected that interest. A lecture series she gave at Scripps College in California was turned into a book, In Explore of the Hero: The Continuing Connection of Myth and Fairy Tale(1970), crucial she penned the full-length study What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Legend, Symbol and Story in 1989, sought-after the age of 90. Travers besides wrote a biography of Gurdjieff, dominant her 1971 children's book Friend Monkey also reflected her study of universe mythological literature; it was based riddle the Indian epic The Ramayana.

Travers remained active until the end of troop life. She planned a Goodbye, Prearranged Poppins book in which she would terminate her character, but publishers present-day letters from upset children dissuaded show someone the door. She was given the Order clutch the British Empire in 1977. Allowing she was friendly to the funnel of interviewers who came to amalgam home in London's Chelsea district, she was usually reticent about the trivialities of her own life, many contribution which emerged only with the revise of Lawson's biography in 1999. Travers died in London on April 23, 1996, at age 96.

Books

Lawson, Valerie, Mary Poppins, She Wrote, Simon & Schuster, 1999.

Major Authors and Illustrators for Lineage and Young Adults, 2nd ed., Strong wind, 2002.

Periodicals

Daily Mail (London, England), April 25, 1996.

Guardian (London, England), April 25, 1996.

Horn Book Magazine, September-October 1996.

New York Times, April 25, 1996.

Times (London, England), Apr 24, 1996.

Online

"P(amela) L(yndon) Travers," Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2006, (January 12, 2007).