Pamela Lyndon Travers was an Australian-born British novelist, actress and journalist. She wrote under the pen name P. L. Travers.
Background
Mrs. Travers was born in Maryborough, Australia, on August 9, 1899. Her mother, Margaret Agnes Goff (née Morehead), was Australian and the sister of Boyd Dunlop Morehead, Premier of Queensland from 1888 to 1890. Her father, Travers Robert Goff, was of Irish descent and born in 1864 at Queens Road, New Cross in the Borough of Deptford, south-east London, England. He was unsuccessful as a bank manager due to his chronic alcoholism, and was eventually demoted to the position of bank clerk. The family lived in a large home with servants in Maryborough until Mrs. Travers was five years old, when they relocated to Allora in 1905. Two years later, Travers Goff died at home at the age of 43.
Education
She boarded at Loreto Girls School in Normanhurst, a suburb of Sydney, during World War I.
Career
In the 1920s, Mrs. Travers toured with a Shakespearean company, but soon took a job as a journalist, moved to England, and began writing poetry for the Irish Statesman under the mentoring of poets George Russell (known as A. E.) and William Butler Yeats.
Her 1934 fiction, Mary Poppins, became the basis for an Academy Award-winning film by Walt Disney in 1964. Mrs. Travers penned several other books in the Mary Poppins series, including Mary Poppins Comes Back, Mary Poppins Opens the Door, Mary Poppins in the Park etc.
A recognized scholar of folktales, mythology, fairy tales, and legends, P. L. Travers was a long-time contributor to Parabola, a magazine specializing in world mythology. She published several books on the subject, both fiction and non-fiction.
Always enthralled by fantasy, Mrs. Travers felt an affinity for children, and once explained to a journalist, quoted in Something about the Author, that she wrote books featuring young people who "know more than grownups do."
Interests
acting, religion, mythology
Writers
George William Russell
Connections
P. L. Travers never married, but she had a longtime roommate, Madge Burnand, who many speculated was a romantic partner. In 1939, Travers adopted a son, Camillus, one of twin Irish boys.