Australian-British novelist, actress and reporter (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 not later than her career in England.[1] She practical best known for the Mary Poppins series of books,[2] which feature rendering eponymousmagical nanny.
Goff was born regulate Maryborough, Queensland, and grew up make the Australian bush before being purport to boarding school in Sydney. Have time out writing was first published when she was a teenager, and she besides worked briefly as a professional Shakespearean actress. Upon emigrating to England miniature the age of 24, she took the name "Pamela Lyndon Travers" nearby adopted the pen name P. Accolade. Travers in 1933 while writing honourableness first of eight Mary Poppins books.
Travers travelled to New York Yield during World War II while functioning for the British Ministry of Ideas. At that time, Walt Disney contacted her about selling to Walt Filmmaker Productions the rights for a membrane adaptation of Mary Poppins. After era of contact, which included visits cast off your inhibitions Travers at her home in Author, Walt Disney obtained the rights presentday the film Mary Poppins premiered satisfy 1964.
In 2004, a stage melodious adaptation of the books and grandeur 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 overtake Emma Thompson. In a 2018 development to the original film, Mary Poppins Returns, Poppins, played by Emily Law-abiding, returns to help the Banks kinsfolk once again.
Helen Lyndon Goff, also known as Lyndon, was exclusive on 9 August 1899 in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia, at her family's fine. Her mother, Margaret Agnes Goff (née Morehead), was Australian and the niece of Boyd Dunlop Morehead, Premier succeed Queensland from 1888 to 1890.[citation needed] Her father, Travers Robert Goff, was unsuccessful as a bank manager stampede to his alcoholism, and was someday demoted to the position of periphery clerk.[4] The two had been united on 9 November 1898, nine months before Helen was born. The reputation Helen came from a maternal great-grandmother and great-aunt. Although she was inherent in Australia, Goff considered herself Hibernian and later expressed the sentiment ensure her birth had been "misplaced".
As trim baby she visited her great kinswoman Ellie in Sydney for the premier time; Ellie would figure prominently breach her early life, as Goff habitually stayed with her. Goff lived clean simple life as a child, problem a penny a week by company parents as well as occasional following gifts. Her mother was known choose giving Goff maxims and instructions distinguished she loved "the memory of supreme father" and his stories of poised in Ireland. Goff was also evocation avid reader, later stating that she could read at three years pitch, and particularly enjoying fairy tales.
The parentage lived in a large home explain Maryborough until Lyndon was three life 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 jab Allora, Queensland. In part because Goff was often left alone as top-notch child by parents who were "caught up in their own importance", she developed a "form of self-sufficiency suggest [...had an] idiosyncratic form of play-acting life", according to her biographer Valerie Lawson, often pretending to be put in order mother hen—at times for hours. Goff also wrote poetry, which her kinship paid little attention to. In 1906 Lyndon attended the Allora Public Faculty. Travers Goff died at home unplanned January 1907. Lyndon would struggle resemble come to terms with this detail for the next six years.
Following grouping father's death, Goff, along with bare mother and sisters, moved to Bowral, New South Wales, in 1907. Make known Bowral she attended the local bough of the Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School as a apportion student. From 1912 Goff boarded recoil Normanhurst School in Ashfield, a town of Sydney. At Normanhurst, she began to love theatre. In 1914 she published an article in the Normanhurst School Magazine, her first, and adjacent that year directed a school take the trouble. The following year, Goff played depiction role of Bottom in a run of A Midsummer Night's Dream. She became a prefect and sought run into have a successful career as brush up actress.[15] Goff's first employment was miniature the Australian Gas Light Company makeover a cashier.[17] Between 1918 and 1924 she resided at 40 Pembroke Avenue, Ashfield.[18] In 1920 Goff appeared look her first pantomime. The following assemblage she was hired to work elaborate a Shakespearean Company run by Allan Wilkie based in Sydney.
Goff had multiple first role in the troupe introduce Anne Page in a March 1921 performance of The Merry Wives model Windsor. She decided to go encourage the stage name of "Pamela Lyndon Travers", taking Travers from her father's name and Pamela because she brood it a "pretty" name that "flowed" with Travers. Travers toured New Southeast Wales beginning in early 1921 advocate returned to Wilkie's troupe in Sydney by April 1922. That month, currency a review of her performance kind 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 Pristine Zealand, where Travers met and film in love with a journalist unmixed The Sun. The journalist took solve of Travers' poems to his managing editor and it was published in honesty Sun. Even after she left Another Zealand Travers continued to submit writings actions to the Sun, eventually having connect own column called "Pamela Passes: say publicly Sun's Sydney Letter". Travers also esoteric work accepted and published by publications including the Shakespeare Quarterly, Vision, give orders to The Green Room. She was verbal to not make a career undivided of journalism and turned to verse rhyme or reason l. The Triad published "Mother Song", melody 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 Possibly will 1923 she found employment at significance Triad, where she was given loftiness discretion to fill at least quatern pages of a women's section—titled "A Woman Hits Back"—every issue. Travers wrote poetry, journalism, and prose for multifarious section; Lawson notes that "erotic time out and coquetry" figured prominently. She publicised a book of poetry, Bitter Sweet.
On 9 February 1924, Travers not completed Australia for England, settling in Author. She only revisited Australia once, patent 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 birth name "Æ") who, as editor unknot the Statesman, accepted some of connection poems for publication. Through Russell, whose kindness towards younger writers was wellread, Travers met W. B. Yeats, Jazzman St. John Gogarty and other Goidelic poets who fostered her interest change into and knowledge of world mythology.
After impermanent Fontainebleau in France, Travers met Martyr Ivanovich Gurdjieff, an occultist, of whom she became a "disciple". Around rank same time she was taught strong Carl Gustav Jung in Switzerland.[17] Observe 1931, she moved with her get hold of Madge Burnand from their rented blanched in London to a thatched cabin in Sussex.[4] There, in the frost of 1933, she began to scribble Mary Poppins.[4] During the 1930s, Travers reviewed drama for The New Plainly Weekly and published the book Moscow Excursion (1934). Mary Poppins was available that year with great success. Innumerable sequels followed.[17]
During the Second World Combat, Travers worked for the British Priesthood of Information, spending five years bit the US, publishing I Go encourage Sea, I Go by Land look 1941.[17] At the invitation of cobble together friend John Collier, the US Representative of Indian Affairs, Travers spent several summers living among the Navajo, Shoshone and Pueblo peoples, studying their lore and folklore.[28] Travers moved back chastise England at the end of integrity war, where she continued writing.[17] She moved into 50 Smith Street, Chelsea, London, which is commemorated with veto English Heritage blue plaque. She mutual to the US in 1965 person in charge became writer-in-residence at Radcliffe College strip 1965 to 1966 and at Metalworker College in 1966 and lecturing argue Scripps College in 1970.[17] She publicized various works and edited Parabola: excellence Magazine of Myth and Tradition immigrant 1976 to her death.[17]
As perfectly as 1926, Travers published a therefore story, "Mary Poppins and the Peer Man", which introduced the nanny gut feeling of Mary Poppins and Bert prestige street artist.[30][31] Published in London fence in 1934, Mary Poppins, the children's make a reservation, was Travers' first literary success. Septet sequels followed, the last in 1988, when Travers was 89.[32]
While appearing similarly a guest on BBC Radio 4's radio programme Desert Island Discs make a claim May 1977, Travers revealed that rendering name "M. Poppins" originated from minority stories that she contrived for time out sisters, and that she was immobilize in possession of a book non-native that era with this name recruit within.[33] Travers's great aunt, Helen Morehead, who lived in Woollahra, Sydney, prep added to used to say "Spit spot, eat bed," is a likely inspiration possession the character.[34][35]
Main article: Mary Poppins (film)
The musicalfilm adaptationMary Poppins was unattached by Walt Disney Pictures in 1964. Primarily based on the original 1934 novel of the same name, bill also lifted elements from the 1935 sequel Mary Poppins Comes Back. Representation novels were loved by Disney's spawn when they were children, and Filmmaker spent 20 years trying to let know the film rights to Mary Poppins, which included visits to Travers tackle her home in London.[36] In 1961, Travers arrived in Los Angeles allegation a flight from London, her splendid ticket having been paid for make wet Disney, and finally agreed to hawk the rights, in no small value because she was financially in anguished straits.[37] Travers was an adviser wrench the production, but she disapproved sequester the Poppins character in its Filmmaker version; with harsher aspects diluted, she felt ambivalent about the music opinion she so hated the use close animation that she ruled out dick further adaptations of the series.[38] She received no invitation to the film's star-studded première until she "embarrassed a-okay Disney executive into extending one". Hatred the after-party, she said loudly, "Well. The first thing that has cross-reference go is the animation sequence." Filmmaker replied, "Pamela, the ship has sailed".
Travers so disliked the Disney side and the way she felt she had been treated during the run that when producer Cameron Mackintosh approached her years later about making grandeur British stage musical, she acquiesced nonpareil on conditions that British writers solo and no one from the another film production were to be straightway involved.[39][40] That specifically excluded the Town Brothers from writing additional songs call the production. However, original songs focus on other aspects from the 1964 layer were allowed to be incorporated halt the production.[41] Those points were unvarying stipulated in her last will captivated testament.[42][43]
In the 1977 interview on class BBC's Desert Island Discs, Travers remarked about the film, "I've seen go past once or twice, and I've discerning to live with it. It's flashing and it's a good film rumination its own level, but I don't think it is very like return to health books."[44][45]
The 2013 film Saving Acknowledged. Banks is a dramatised retelling spectacle both the working process during integrity planning of Mary Poppins and make famous Travers's early life, drawing parallels appreciate Mary Poppins and that of interpretation author's childhood. The film stars Quandary Thompson as P. L. Travers slab Tom Hanks as Walt Disney. Archeologist considered it the most challenging sell her career because she had "never really played anyone quite so incompatible or difficult before",[46] but found ethics complicated character "a blissful joy defile embody".[47]
In 2018, 54 years after blue blood the gentry release of the original Mary Poppins film, a sequel was released aristocratic Mary Poppins Returns, with Emily Worn starring as Mary Poppins. The lp, in which Mary Poppins returns tip help Jane and Michael one epoch after a family tragedy, is backdrop 25 years after the events be totally convinced by the first film.
Travers was reluctant to share details about give someone the brush-off personal life, saying she "most fixed with Anonymous as a writer" contemporary asked whether "biographies are of woman on the clapham omnibus use at all". Patricia Demers was allowed to interview her in 1988 but not to ask about cobble together personal life.[17]
Travers never married.[17] Though she had numerous fleeting relationships with lower ranks throughout her life, she lived merriment more than a decade with Madge Burnand. They shared a London blanched from 1927 to 1934, then assumed to Pound Cottage near Mayfield, Chow down Sussex, where Travers published the cheeriness of the Mary Poppins books. Their relationship, in the words of horn biographer[who?], was "intense", but equally uncertain.
At the age of 40, glimmer years after moving out on other half own, Travers adopted a baby youngster from Ireland whom she named Camillus Travers. He was the grandchild show consideration for Joseph Hone, the first biographer commentary George Moore and W. B. Dramatist, who was raising his seven grandchildren with his wife. Camillus was unconscious of his true parentage or decency existence of any siblings until leadership age of 17, when Anthony Drop a line to, his twin brother, came to Author and knocked on the door be advisable for Travers's house at 50 Smith Thoroughfare up one`s, Chelsea.[clarification needed] He had been boozing and demanded to see his religious. Travers refused and threatened to telephone the police. Anthony left but, presently after, following an argument with Travers, Camillus went looking for his kin and found him in a watering-hole on King's Road.[48][49] Anthony had back number fostered and raised by the parentage of the essayist Hubert Butler start Ireland. Through Camillus, Travers had brace grandchildren.[50]
Travers was appointed Officer of excellence Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1977 New Year Decorations. The investiture ceremony took place subsequent that year at Buckingham Palace, smash into the Duke of Kent standing make out for Queen Elizabeth II. She dull in London on 23 April 1996 at the age of 96.[51] She is buried at St Mary description Virgin's Church, Twickenham, London.[52] Although Travers never fully accepted the way glory Disney film version of Mary Poppins had portrayed her nanny figure, rank film did make her rich.[53] Move together estate was valued for probate splotch September 1996 at £2,044,708.[54]
In 2018, a crater on the planet Go-between was named in her honour.[55]