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P.L. Travers

Born

in Maryborough, Australia

August 09, 1899

Died

April 23, 1996

Genre

Children's, Fiction

Influences

J.M. Barrie, William Butler Yeats, Gurdjieff

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Pamela Lyndon Travers was an Australian novelist, actress and journalist, popularly remembered for her series of children's novels about mystical nanny Mary Poppins.
She was born to bank manager Travers Robert Goff and Margaret Agnes. Her father died when she was seven, and although "epileptic seizure delirium" was given as the cause of death, Travers herself "always believed the underlying cause was sustained, heavy drinking".
Travers began to publish her poems while still a teenager and wrote for The Bulletin and Triad while also gaining a reputation as an actress. She toured Australia and New Zealand with a Shakespearean touring company before leaving for England in 1924. There she dedicated herself to writing under the pen name P. L. Trav Pamela Lyndon Travers was an Australian novelist, actress and journalist, popularly remembered for her series of children's novels about mystical nanny Mary Poppins.
She was born to bank manager Travers Robert Goff and Margaret Agnes. Her father died when she was seven, and although "epileptic seizure delirium" was given as the cause of death, Travers herself "always believed the underlying cause was sustained, heavy drinking".
Travers began to publish her poems while still a teenager and wrote for The Bulletin and Triad while also gaining a reputation as an actress. She toured Australia and New Zealand with a Shakespearean touring company before leaving for England in 1924. There she dedicated herself to writing under the pen name P. L. Travers.
In 1925 while in Ireland, Travers met the poet George William Russell who, as editor of The Irish Statesman, accepted some of her poems for publication. Through Russell, Travers met William Butler Yeats and other Irish poets who fostered her interest in and knowledge of world mythology. Later, the mystic Gurdjieff would have a great effect on her, as would also have on several other literary figures.
The 1934 publication of Mary Poppins was Travers' first literary success.Five sequels followed, as well as a collection of other novels, poetry collections and works of non-fiction.
The Disney musical adaptation was released in 1964. Primarily based on the first novel in what was then a sequence of four books, it also lifted elements from the sequel Mary Poppins Comes Back. Although Travers was an adviser to the production she disapproved of the dilution of the harsher aspects of Mary Poppins's character, felt ambivalent about the music and disliked the use of animation to such an extent that she ruled out any further adaptations of the later Mary Poppins novels. At the film's star-studded premiere, she reportedly approached Disney and told him that the animated sequence had to go. Disney responded by saying "Pamela, the ship has sailed." and walked away. Travers would never again agree to another Poppins/Disney adaptation, though Disney made several attempts to persuade her to change her mind.
So fervent was Travers' dislike of the Walt Disney adaptation and the way she felt she had been treated during the production, that well into her 90s, when she was approached by producer Cameron Mackintosh to do the stage musical, she only acquiesced upon the condition that only English born writers (and specifically no Americans) and no one from the film production were to be directly involved with the creative process of the stage musical. This specifically excluded the Sherman Brothers from writing additional songs for the production even though they were still very prolific. Original songs and other aspects from the 1964 film were allowed to be incorporated into the production however. These points were stipulated in her last will and testament.
Travers was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1977. She died in London in 1996.
Although Travers never married, she adopted a boy when she was in her late 30s. ...more

Combine Editions
P.L. Travers’s books

Average rating: 4.01 · 182,874 ratings · 9,832 reviews · 64 distinct works • Similar authors

	Mary Poppins (Mary Poppins, #1) 4.01 avg rating — 139,534 ratings — published 1934 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mary Poppins Comes Back (Mary Poppins, #2) by P.L. Travers, Mary Shepard (Illustrator) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 15,854 ratings — published 1935 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mary Poppins Opens the Door (Mary Poppins, #3) by P.L. Travers, Mary Shepard (Illustrator), Agnes Sims (Illustrator) 4.07 avg rating — 8,849 ratings — published 1943 — 24 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mary Poppins in the Park (Mary Poppins, #4) by P.L. Travers, Mary Shepard (Illustrator) 4.08 avg rating — 7,231 ratings — published 1952 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane (Mary Poppins, #5) 3.88 avg rating — 2,260 ratings — published 1982 — 27 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mary Poppins: The Complete Collection (Mary Poppins, #1-6) 4.08 avg rating — 1,872 ratings — published 1997 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mary Poppins and the House Next Door (Mary Poppins, #6) 3.89 avg rating — 1,729 ratings — published 1988 — 26 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mary Poppins (Mary Poppins, #1-4) by P.L. Travers, Mary Shepard (Illustrator) 4.21 avg rating — 895 ratings — published 2000 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mary Poppins and Mary Poppins Comes Back by P.L. Travers, Mary Shepard (Illustrator) 4.04 avg rating — 921 ratings — published 1935 — 40 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mary Poppins from A to Z (Mary Poppins, #7) by P.L. Travers, Mary Shepard (Illustrator) 3.85 avg rating — 686 ratings — published 1935 — 22 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by P.L. Travers…

Series by P.L. Travers

Mary Poppins (8 books)
by

P.L. Travers,

Mary Shepard (Illustrator)

4.01 avg rating — 180,056 ratings

Santa Claus has his work cut out for him this year. We asked on Facebook and Twitter: What fictional book thing do you want for Christmas? Here...

Polls

October 2015 New School Classics Group Read

1934, Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers, 209 pages

26 votes, 19.3%

1982, Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally, 429 pages

24 votes, 17.8%

1981, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, 647 pages

16 votes, 11.9%

1931, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, 418 pages

9 votes, 6.7%

1997, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, 340 pages

9 votes, 6.7%

1914, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, 329 pages

9 votes, 6.7%

1958, Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene, 220 pages

8 votes, 5.9%

1997, American Pastoral by Philip Roth, 432 pages

7 votes, 5.2%

1971, Maurice by E.M. Forster, 256 pages

6 votes, 4.4%

1939, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, 243 pages

5 votes, 3.7%

1997, Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, 449 pages

3 votes, 2.2%

1976, Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley, 729 pages

3 votes, 2.2%

1972, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, 165 pages

3 votes, 2.2%

1957, The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino, 217 pages

3 votes, 2.2%

1943, The Makioka Sisters by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, 530 pages

2 votes, 1.5%

1963, Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, 564 pages

1 vote, 0.7%

1905, The Petty Demon by Fyodor Sologub, 352 pages

1 vote, 0.7%

1997, Out by Natsuo Kirino, 400 pages

0 votes, 0.0%

135 total votes

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P.L. Travers’s Followers (723)

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