Pamela Lyndon Travers
born Aug. 9,
1899, Maryborough, Queen., Austl.
died April
23, 1996, London, Eng.
Australian-born English writer known for her
Mary Poppins books, which have
been widely translated and were the basis for
the motion picture Mary Poppins (1964).
As a dancer and actress in Australia, she
changed her name to P.L. Travers. She
subsequently moved to England, where she worked
as a journalist and became friendly with the
poets William Butler Yeats and AE (George
William Russell). AE published some of her poems
in The Irish Statesman. In the 1930s she wrote
drama criticism for the New English Weekly. Her
first book, Mary Poppins (1934), about a
magical, good-hearted, and exceedingly efficient
nanny, was an immediate success. Two years
later, after she began writing sequels, Travers
decided to write full-time. She traveled
throughout Europe and the United States
lecturing and gaining new material for her
stories. During World War II she worked in the
British Ministry of Information. From 1965 to
1971 she was writer-in-residence at such
colleges as Radcliffe, Smith, and Scripps in the
United States. She later served as a
contributing editor (1976–96) to Parabola, a
journal on mythology. She never married but
adopted a son. Later works include several
travel books and a collection of essays, What
the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and
Story (1989).
