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    Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers
    Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers
    Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers
    Ebook521 pages10 hours

    Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers

    By Valerie Lawson

    4/5

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    THE ONLY TRUE STORY BEHIND THE CREATOR OF MARY POPPINS

    The remarkable life of P.L. Travers, the creator of Mary Poppins—perfect for fans of the movie Mary Poppins Returns and the original Disney classic!

    “An arresting life…Lawson is superb at excavating the details.” —Library Journal

    The spellbinding stories of Mary Poppins, the quintessentially English and utterly magical nanny, have been loved by generations. She flew into the lives of the unsuspecting Banks family in a children’s book that was instantly hailed as a classic, then became a household name when Julie Andrews stepped into the title role in Walt Disney’s hugely successful and equally classic film. But the Mary Poppins in the stories was not the cheery film character. She was tart and sharp, plain and vain. She was a remarkable character.

    The story of Mary Poppins’ creator, as this definitive biography reveals, is equally remarkable. The fabulous English nanny was actually conceived by an Australian, Pamela Lyndon Travers, who came to London in 1924 from Queensland as a journalist. She became involved with Theosophy, traveled in the literary circles of W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot, and became a disciple of the famed spiritual guru, Gurdjieff. She famously clashed with Walt Disney over the adaptation of the Mary Poppins books into film. Travers, whom Disney accused of vanity for “thinking you know more about Mary Poppins than I do,” was as tart and opinionated as Julie Andrews’s big-screen Mary Poppins was cheery. Yet it was a love of mysticism and magic that shaped Travers’s life as well as the character of Mary Poppins. The clipped, strict, and ultimately mysterious nanny who emerged from her pen was the creation of someone who remained inscrutable and enigmatic to the end of her ninety-six years.

    Valerie Lawson’s illuminating biography provides the first full look whose personal journey is as intriguing as her beloved characters.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateDec 3, 2013
    ISBN9781476762937
    Author

    Valerie Lawson

    Valerie Lawson is a feature writer for The Sydney Morning Herald. Her previous books are Connie Sweetheart and The Allens Affair. She lives in Sydney and London.

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    Reviews for Mary Poppins, She Wrote

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    • 4/5
      I adore the Mary Poppins film by Walt Disney Studios. The film is one of few that I feel is better than the source material. I sawthe film about PL Travers and Walt Disney's long-time negotiations for making the film, a few years ago. I was looking forward to reading this book. Aaron bought it for me for Christmas, as I had it on my list. I struggled to read the book, though. I do not feel that it was engaging, though I continued to hope. PL Travers' name at birth was Helen Lyndon Goff. Perhaps it was the age into which she was born, or the cultural influences combined with the times. She seemed very selfish and I do not have a sense that she was ever truly happy. Her children's writing evokes a playful imagination that seems unlikely when compared to the way she lived life. She seems to have sought out something that was missing (religion, love) and never seems to have found it. She did eventually adopt a son but in doing so, attempted to live out some Mary Poppins-esque fantasy by which she saved the baby Camillus. At age 17 he learned that his life was built on lies and his relationship with his mother was never the same. Family's was a twin. He and his many siblings were being raised by grandparents who had fallen on hard times and offered some of the children out for adoption. Camillus was chosen because the famiky was Irish and Travers' father had idolized Ireland to her. Travers was offered both twins but vehemently chose the more beautiful of the children; the one who appeared to be healthier. All in all, Travers was a woman who would lie in order to create a more romantic version of her reality. She went from father figure to father figure in search of elusive love and fulfillment. Some wonder if she was physically and romantically entangled with a woman with whom she lived for a decade. She never found the happiness she sought. She seems to have died as a lonely woman whose truest success came from Mr Disney choosing to improve her book, in film. I would honestly rate the book lower; I didn't enjoy it, likely because Travers does not seem to be a person I would enjoy. The book did eventually improve when the author began telling about the "Mary Poppins" years, and then the events surrounding Camillus. That poor man. He died heartbroken.
    • 3/5
      I received Mary Poppins, She Wrote as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

      I'm not familiar with P.L. Travers or Mary Poppins. Growing up, I knew of the latter, but never read the books and only saw bits and pieces of the Disney film. For whatever reason, it wasn't one that grabbed me. Now with a resurgence of interest in Travers, due in large part to the recent film Saving Mr. Banks, this

      The book moves along at a good pace, from Travers' childhood in Australia--the father and aunt that provided inspiration for Mr. Banks and Mary Poppins respectively--and her early career as a writer in England and Ireland, to the creation of the series whose legacy was both a great triumph and a great disappointment to its author. She's a truly fascinating figure, someone whose personality challenged conceptions of what an early 20th century woman "should be."

      That said, this strength is also a weakness. Travers is a difficult subject for a biography--she's enigmatic and not particularly warm and fuzzy. Her life story is interesting, but not particularly happy, and I think that some readers may have difficult connecting with that.

      Nearly 20 years after her death, though, I'm glad her story is finally being told. It's always a good thing to see a strong woman profiled who breaks the mold of convention.
    • 4/5
      The Mary Poppins books were part of my childhood. I didn't actually like Mary Poppins herself - she was scary and mean - but I liked the adventures she took the Banks children on. Their combination of magic with ordinary life is the kind of fantasy I like. It turns out my mother grew up with Mary Poppins, too. One night her father was listening to Alexander Woollcott's "Town Crier" radio show and he reviewed this new kid's book. My grandfather bought it and read a bit to my mother every night. She knew how to read, and one day she was curious about the rest of the story and finished the book. She says she realized later it kind of hurt her dad's feelings, and she felt bad. Anyway, my mom still says "She's perfect, perfect in every way" about herself, quoting Mary herself.So I eagerly looked for this biography. It covers the main facts of P. L. Travers' life pretty well, but lacks insight in a lot of areas.Pamela Travers, born born Helen Lyndon Goff, grew up in Australia where her father was a failed bank manager. She began publishing poems as a young woman and pursued a fairly successful acting career. Then she moved to England and continued to write professionally. She met the poet George William Russell who published some of her poems and through him met other Irish poets. A lifelong seeker, she was a student of the mystic mystic George Gurdjieff for a while. In 1934 she published the first Mary Poppins book. She continued to write for the rest of her life. I rediscovered her in the 80s when her essays about mythology started to appear in Parabola magazine.In her later years she served as a writer in residence at several colleges, with varied success. She tended to view herself as a great writer the students should approach, and waited for them to come pay homage. Students were intimidated by her imperious manner and stayed away.I had a problem right away because describing her young years Lawson refers to Travers' relationships with older male mentor figures as her "search for Mr. Banks." This didn't make sense, since Mr. Banks in the books seems like an insignificant character, always absent minded and dreaming.Another problem was that Lawson is openly scornful of Gurdjieff and seems to think he was some kind of charlatan. I can't vouch for his character but I've read a fair amount about him and his students, and that's not my impression of him at all.The biggest problem was that she doesn't talk about the kind of mother Travers was. She adopted an Irish baby boy, separating him from his twin. The boys met by chance when they were teenagers, and her son was furious that she'd never told him he had a twin. The book makes this seem like it caused a break between them, but a few chapters later the son is mentioned doing things with her as though nothing happened. Maybe there was no dramatic reconciliation, but it could have been described better. More than that, there's nothing about her as a mother - was she strict like Mary Poppins? did she tell stories? As I was reading and noticing this gap, I figured that the son hadn't cooperated with the biography. But in the acknowledgments he's the person she says gave her the most help.I was pleased that Travers hated the Disney Mary Poppins movie as much as I did. I remember leaving Grauman's Chinese Theater feeling very annoyed that they'd gotten it wrong because Mary Poppins is strict and mean, not cheery and smiling. There's a lot of interesting stuff about how the movie came to be made and the process of making it into a film, at least.

    Book preview

    Mary Poppins, She Wrote - Valerie Lawson

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