P. L. Travers

Helen Lyndon Goff, known within her family as Lyndon, was born on 9 August 1899 in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia. Her mother, Margaret Agnes Goff (née Morehead), was Australian and the niece of Boyd Dunlop Morehead, Premier of Queensland from 1888 to 1890. Her father, Travers Robert Goff, was born in Peckham, Surrey, England, in 1863[2] of parents who were both the children of Irish clergymen.[3] He was unsuccessful as a bank manager owing to his alcoholism, and was eventually demoted to the position of bank clerk.[4] The family lived in a large home with servants in Maryborough until Lyndon was five years old, when they relocated to Allora in 1905. Two years later, Travers Goff died at home at the age of 43.

Following her father's death, Goff, along with her mother and sisters, moved to Bowral, New South Wales, in 1907, living there until 1917.[5] She boarded at the now-defunct Normanhurst School in Ashfield, a suburb of Sydney, during World War I.[6]

Goff began publishing her poems while still a teenager. She wrote for The Bulletin and Triad and began gaining a reputation as an actress under the stage name "Pamela Lyndon Travers". She toured Australia and New Zealand with Allan Wilkie's Shakespearean Company, before leaving for England in 1924. There, she changed her name to "Pamela Travers", keeping "Lyndon" as her middle name, in order to act and dance on stage, a career move opposed by her family.[7] In 1931, she moved with her friend Madge Burnand from their rented flat in London to a thatched cottage in Sussex.[4] There, in the winter of 1933, she began to write Mary Poppins.[4]

Travers greatly admired and emulated J. M. Barrie, author of the Peter Pan character. Her first publisher was Barrie's ward, Peter Davies, one of the five Llewelyn Davies boys who were the inspiration for Peter Pan.[4]

While in Ireland in 1925, Travers met the poet George William Russell (who wrote under the name "Æ") who, as editor of the Irish Statesman, accepted some of her poems for publication. Through Russell, whose kindness towards younger writers was legendary, Travers met W. B. Yeats, Oliver St. John Gogarty, and other Irish poets who fostered her interest in and knowledge of world mythology. She had studied the Fourth Way teachings of George Gurdjieff under Jane Heap and, in March 1936 with the help of Jessie Orage (widow of Alfred Richard Orage), she met Gurdjieff, who would have a great effect on her. She met several other literary figures as well.[8]

At the invitation of her friend John Collier, the US Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Travers spent two summers living among the Navajo, Hopi, and Pueblo peoples, studying their mythology and folklore.[9][7] After the war, she remained in the US and became writer-in-residence at Radcliffe College and Smith College.[10]

Travers returned to England,[11] making only one brief visit to Sydney, in 1960, while on her way to Japan to study Zen mysticism.

Travers's literary output other than Mary Poppins and its sequels included other novels, poetry collections, and works of nonfiction.

As early as 1926, Travers published a short story, "Mary Poppins and the Match Man," which introduced the nanny character of Mary Poppins and Bert the street artist.[12][13] Published in London in 1934, Mary Poppins, the children's book, was Travers's first literary success. Seven sequels followed, the last in 1988, when Travers was 89.[14]

While appearing as a guest on BBC Radio 4's radio programme Desert Island Discs in May 1977, Travers revealed that the name "M. Poppins" originated from childhood stories that she contrived for her sisters, and that she was still in possession of a book from that era with this name inscribed within.[15] Travers's great aunt, Helen Morehead, who lived in Woollahra, Sydney, and used to say "Spit spot, into bed," is a likely inspiration for the character.[16][17]

Though Travers had numerous fleeting relationships with men throughout her life, she lived for more than a decade with Madge Burnand, daughter of Sir Francis Burnand, a playwright and the former editor of Punch. They shared a London flat from 1927 to 1934, then moved to Pound Cottage near Mayfield, East Sussex, where Travers published the first of the Mary Poppins books. Their friendship, in the words of one biographer, was "intense", but equally ambiguous.

At the age of 40, two years after moving out on her own, Travers adopted a baby boy from Ireland whom she named Camillus Travers. He was the grandchild of Joseph Hone, W. B. Yeats' first biographer, who was raising his seven grandchildren with his wife. Camillus was unaware of his true parentage or the existence of any siblings until the age of 17, when Anthony Hone, his twin brother, came to London and knocked on the door of Travers's house at 50 Smith Street, Chelsea. He had been drinking and demanded to see his brother. Travers refused and threatened to call the police. Anthony left but, soon after, following an argument with Travers, Camillus went looking for his brother and found him in a pub on King's Road.[29][30][31] Anthony had been fostered and raised by the family of the essayist Hubert Butler in Ireland.

Travers was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1977 New Year Honours. She died in London on 23 April 1996 at the age of 96.[32] Although Travers never fully accepted the way the Disney film version of Mary Poppins had portrayed her nanny figure, the film did make her rich.[33] The value of Travers' estate was probated in September 1996 at £2,044,708.[34]

Camillus died in London in November 2011. He was over 70, but his life had nonetheless been cut short from the effects of alcoholic excess.[29]

• P. L. Travers - papers, ca. 1899-1988, 4.5 metres of textual material (28 boxes) - manuscript, typescript, and printed Clippings, Photographs, Objects, Drawings, State Library of New South Wales, MLMSS 5341 , MLOH 62
• P. L. Travers - further papers, 1901-1991, Textual Records, Graphic Materials, Clippings, Photographs, Drawings, 2 boxes - 0.26 Meters, State Library of New South Wales MLMSS 5341 ADD-ON 2130
• P. L. Travers, four diaries, 1948-1953, Camillus Travers is the son of P. L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins. He gave these notebooks to his mother as a boy and they were used by her for recording his schooldays and their holidays spent together, as well as other events over this period, State Library of New South Wales MLMSS 7956
• Family and personal photographs collected by P.L. Travers, ca 1891-1980, 1 portfolio (51 black and white, sepia, col. photographs, 2 photograph albums, 1 hand coloured lithograph, 17 coloured transparencies) various sizes, State Library of New South Wales PX*D 334

• Brody, Paul (2013). The Real Life Mary Poppins: The Life and Times of P. L. Travers. CreateSpace (published 20 February 2013). ISBN 978-1-4820-7503-8.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Demers, Patricia (1991). P.L. Travers. Twayne Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8057-7005-6.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Dooling Draper, Ellen; Koralek, Jenny, eds. (1999). A Lively Oracle: a Centennial Celebration of P. L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins. New York: Larson Publications.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• "Goff, Helen Lyndon [pseuds. P. 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 membership required.)
• Travers, P.L. (1970–71), "George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1877–1949)", Man, Myth and Magic: Encyclopedia of the Supernatural, London: Purnell, 12 vol.; reprinted in International Gurdjieff Review 3.1 (Fall 1999), In Memoriam: An Introduction to Gurdjieff

Media related to P. L. Travers at Wikimedia Commons

Quotations related to P. L. Travers at Wikiquote

• P. L. Travers at Library of Congress Authorities, with 65 catalogue records
• P. L. Travers at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• P. L. Travers at Find a Grave
• Anemaat, Louise (ed.), Guide to the papers of P. L. Travers in the Mitchell Library (PDF), State Library of New South Wales, archived from the original (PDF) on 12 September 2014.