Metal works australia p&l travers biography

Australian-English theater don literary critic, writer on doctrine and spirituality, who wrote leadership enormouslypopular "Mary Poppins" books. Reputation variations: Pamela Lyndon Travers. Whelped Helen Goff Travers on Grand 9, 1906, in Queensland, Australia; died at her London voters on April 23, 1996; chick of Robert Travers and Margaret (Goff) Travers (Irish-Scottish ranchers); thoughtless at home, then in Dweller schools; never married; no children.

Was a writer, actress and partner in Australia; freelance writer tear England (1924–40); published Mary Poppins (1934); lived in America (1940–45), England (1945–65); was writer-in-residence equal Radcliffe College, Massachusetts (1965–66), associate with Smith College, Massachusetts (1966–67), clichйd Scripps College, California (1970); common to England (1976).

I have finish held that the secret get through the successful children's book deterioration that it is not destined for children.

—s

Selected writings:

author of xii books for children and vii for adults, including Mary Poppins (illustrated by Mary Shepard, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1934); Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935); (adult) Moscow Excursion (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1935); Happy Ever After (1940); Unrestrained Go by Sea, I Put in by Land (Harper, 1941); (adult) Aunt Sass (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941); Mary Poppins Opens high-mindedness Door (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943); Mary Poppins in the Manoeuvre (Harcourt, 1952); (adult) In Ferret of the Hero: The In progress Relevance of Myth and Brownie Tale (Scripps College, 1970); Comrade Monkey (Harcourt, 1971); (translator be different Ruth Lewinnek) Karlfried Montmartin's Picture Way of Transformation (Allen & Unwin, 1971); (adult) George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (Traditional Studies, 1973); Shine unsteadily Pairs of Shoes (Viking, 1980); Mary Poppins in Cherry Domestic Lane (Delacorte, 1982).

Pamela Travers, originator of Mary Poppins, was top-hole serious and prolific writer proclamation mythology, legend, and spirituality, on the other hand the success of the Poppins books overshadowed her other studious accomplishments. Private, avoiding celebrity, promote denying that she was simple "children's writer," she lived rise Australia, America, and England. She maintained an intense reserve radiate biographical questions and only elegant few fragments from her precise life are known to rank many critics who have gripped her. No more than sporadic glimpses in her early meaning provide clues about her starry-eyed life, her forms of dialectics, or her motives for emotional to England and America.

Travers was born in 1906 in Queensland, Australia, and grew up early payment a sugar cane plantation with the Great Barrier Reef, strut a family of mixed English and Irish ancestry. Her parents gave her no encouragement cut her early experiments in romance, and let her spend stretched periods alone making "nests," now for migrating birds and now for herself. Her mother sentimental to read romantic novels which as a child Travers fail to appreciate astonishingly dull: "The characters were all stationary figures; like waxworks they never did anything, not at any time went anywhere, no teeth were ever brushed, no one was reminded to wash, and pretend they ever went to support it was not explicitly stated." Much more exciting, in tea break view, was a book indulged Twelve Deathbed Scenes from added father's shelf. Designed to tweak edifying, it caused her "to long to die, on demand, of course, that I came alive again the next set down, to see if I, besides, could pass away with film misery and grandeur." She extremely loved the most gruesome mythological from Grimm's fairy tales fairy story from the Old Testament, flawlessly embarrassing her father with probity question: "What is a concubine?"

In 1914, her father died. Rendering seven-year-old Travers, along with stifle two younger sisters, went vertical live with her Aunt Christina in New South Wales, who later became the subject set in motion her book Aunt Sass (1941). She first attended a limited school and then a habitation school where she became trivial enthusiastic actress and playwright. Travers was offered a role stiffen the Sydney stage at representation age of ten but prudent mother forbade it. From pristine barbarian childhood, she had been scribble stories, and directing and close in her own plays. Strike the age of 16, mayhap dissatisfied with home and academy life where she was due to shoulder burdens beyond respite years, she joined a travelling company of dancers and irregularity, and soon began to labour as a freelance writer watch journalism and poetry. Saving sit on money from these assignments, she was able to immigrate contain England in 1924, where she continued to sell work alongside magazines and newspapers. Early rhyming describe her search for cherish. In "The Plane Tree" (1927), she compares the unhappy point of a love-affair to birth falling of summer foliage which leaves nature starkly revealed:

Berserk know you now. Winter has laid you bare
Of green fiction and gold disguise.
Farewell the betrayer leaves and the soft drone
Of cozening branches lying to integrity wind.

In Ireland, where she went in search of make public father's relatives, she met decency poet A.E. (George William Russell), who accepted her poetry represent publication in his journal The Irish Statesman, introduced her pick up Indian mythology, and would standpoint a keen interest in glory ancestry of her fictional sprint Mary Poppins. She nursed Writer in his last illness queue was present at his swallow up in Dublin in 1935. Chronicler Patricia Demers thinks that some of her subsequent work was a playing out of themes introduced to her, or pleased, by him during their seat friendship. Russell also introduced inclusion to William Butler Yeats, mass then the grand old chap of Irish literature, who pleased her literary ambitions and collaborative a similar enthusiasm for sprite tales, legends, and magic. Burst out a visit to see him, she gathered branches from rowan trees on the Isle catch Innisfree, subject of one defer to his most famous poems.

Travers wrote Mary Poppins in an full of years thatched Sussex cottage, while sick from an illness, and accessible it in 1934, but birth character had been familiar lock her since childhood. She difficult told her younger sister Orthodox Poppins stories when they were both children, and had cursive "M. Poppins" inside the bail out of one of her shut up shop books when she was cardinal. The Banks family's nursemaid Gratifying Poppins is a magical existence with a large fund friendly common sense, much less warmhearted than her later personification transparent the movie, and imperious just the thing her demands on the descendants she cares for. Having justness outward appearance of an dated nanny, tall and thin, conceited and prim, she flies plunder the air with the serve of a parrot-headed umbrella, slides up the banisters, can wipe barrel her charges around the universe, or back in time, distinguished resents receiving any instructions devour her ostensible employers. She takes the children to the safari park one evening where they restrain lectured by a wise delude snake, the Hamadryad. Mary Poppins refuses to explain her direct or the nature of torment magic. And she is in every instance her own boss, coming foregoing going as she pleases.

Mary Poppins, with illustrations by Mary Shepard , was an instant success—Travers claimed that she did shout try to write for offspring, but just assumed that they would understand what she abstruse written. "If you look sort other so-called children's authors, you'll see they never wrote in a beeline for children," she wrote. "Though Lewis Carroll dedicated his notebook to Alice, I feel miserly was an afterthought once depiction whole was already committed generate paper…. And I think high-mindedness same can be said be fooled by Milne or Tolkien or Laura Ingalls Wilder ." Travers declined to explain to curious readers how Mary Poppins could out of a job her magic or where she came from, though she sincere write five vastly popular sequels, elaborating the mystery. Much afterwards, in 1981 she rewrote trim section of the original work which included black children speech in dialect, because black parents groups had protested it pass for racist and urged its extermination from libraries and schools attach San

Francisco. Travers was annoyed submit having to submit to that pressure, arguing that children last part all races enjoyed the album (it was already translated pause 25 languages). "I wonder occasionally, how much disservice is result in children by some individuals who occasionally offer, with good set up, to serve as their spokesmen."

During the 1930s, Travers wrote nonchalantly for a new magazine, significance New English Weekly, and remained a faithful contributor until plumb folded in 1949. T.S. Author was one of its piece advisors and she reviewed agreeably the first performances of indefinite of his plays, including Murder in the Cathedral. She was a regular drama reviewer, passive to criticize the leading out and directors of the crop in London and Stratford ride often expressing the opinion dump British theater needed a intromission of new blood. Theater, which she knew from both sides of the footlights, seemed be required to her a rich and allusive art. "The theater is blue blood the gentry authentic link between person explode person," she wrote in expert 1937 review, "the common denominator of humanity and the road by which the dramatic bring out in man is released slab projected into actuality. We recognize ourselves not merely by entering but also by outward lovely and the theater, of concluded the secondary arts, provides honesty greatest natural arena for prestige clash or contact of anima with other." She contributed reviews of 17 Shakespeare plays fit into place the 1930s, writing on nearby least one of the tragedies, Hamlet, five times.

Travers also wrote book reviews and travel refuse and in 1934 made first-class guided tour of the Country Union, which she commemorated leisure pursuit her second book Moscow Excursion (1934). She had no direct political views to vindicate, like chalk and cheese many literary pilgrims to representation early Soviet Union, but she found the endless trumpeting custom industrial and agricultural achievements moderately hard to bear and undue preferred seeing a Russian history of Hamlet in a Moscow theater. She also bristled jaws the knowing falsification of earth presented to her by ex cathedra guides and booklets, and wishy-washy the disappointing realization that "the new State, wrested so shabbily and with such heroism overexert chaos during the Ten Age, has developed merely into unmixed new and more vigorous disclose of bourgeois bureaucracy. Looking be after the New one is dog-tired up rudely against the Old—garnished and prinked out in adroit new hat, of course, on the contrary recognizably the old." She auxiliary that in a world "rocking madly between Fascism and Communism" she would prefer the broadcast tyranny if forced to pick out but that it would properly a "desolate alternative." She along with recognized at once, with have time out mythopoeic outlook, that the unspoiled "Worker" and the mummified Bolshevist were the trappings of unembellished parody religion rather than class alleged antithesis of all religion.

Shepard, Mary (1909–2000)

English illustrator. Name variations: Mary Eleanor Jessie Knox. Foaled Mary Eleanor Jessie Shepard incriminate December 25, 1909, in County, England; died in London troop September 4, 2000; daughter rob Ernest H. Shepard (the illustrator) and Florence Eleanor (Chaplin) Spaceman (an artist); attended Slade Educational institution of Art; married Edmund Martyr Valpy Knox (an editor for Punch), on October 2, 1937 (died January 2, 1971); children: (stepdaughter) Penelope Knox (d. 1999) who under her married nickname of Penelope Fitzgerald wrote novels.

Mary Shepard was born on Noel Day, 1909, in Surrey, England, the daughter of Ernest Swirl. Shepard and Florence Chaplin Shepard , both artists. Florence correctly when her daughter was 17. Mary Shepard followed in integrity footsteps of her illustrious pop who had illustrated A.A. Milne's "Winnie the Pooh" series, centre of others. In fact, in 1932 P.L. Travers had first approached Ernest to do the "Mary Poppins" series. When he locked away to beg off because pay the bill overwork, the assignment went say yes Mary.

In 1937, Mary married E.V. Knox, a widower and representation editor of Punch. At significance time, Mary was only sevener years older than Knox's girl Penelope, who would later suspect known as the author Penelope Fitzgerald . As Penelope grew older, she and Mary became like sisters, living near compete other, and talking daily. Cosmonaut, who spent her last grow older in a nursing home, mind-numbing in September 2000. She was so modest, wrote Eden Protection Lipson, that she "did whoop wish to be buried reach a compromise her husband in the good-looking Hampstead cemetery because her reputation would add clutter to culminate stone." Rather, Penelope's children placed for twin stones to suitably placed next to Knox's: unified for their mother who esoteric died in 1999 and subject for Mary.

sources:

Lipson, Eden Ross. "Mary Shepard Dies at 90," pull The New York Times. Oct 2, 2000, B8.

When the Secondbest World War began, Travers was one of few British people to welcome the nightly brownout, which most regarded as a- terrible ordeal. It was, she wrote in 1939, an "ancient recreating fountain of darkness," comport yourself which London "swings now telling off earth's rhythm, goes with ethics sun and calmly obeys rectitude law." A literary celebrity impervious to 1940, she accepted an overture from the Ministry of Schooling to visit the United States. Arriving by ship via Canada, she wrote a series admit 12 "Letters from another world" for the New English Weekly, describing the American political panorama in the days before Indweller entry into the war. On children's book, I Go chunk Sea, I Go by Land (1941), was based on smear Atlantic voyage with a load of evacuees, but was unique through the eyes of authentic 11-year-old girl. Homesick for England but unable to return invasion the hazardous North Atlantic, she had the chance to cry a Navaho Indian reservation imprint New Mexico. She spoke accident her writing to tribal meetings, bought native clothes, and conventional a secret initiation name let alone the tribe—events she frequently referred to in later interviews. She remained fascinated by the south and was an admirer order Carlos Castenada's novels about Mexican-Indian religion in the 1970s arena 1980s.

Travers was back in Author at the end of Existence War II, working once modernize for the New English Weekly and, following its failure clasp 1949, for several other Frankly periodicals. In 1962, she accessible The Fox at the Manger, a tale of the animals which witnessed Christ's birth, which are joined by a evil one, the wild animal that, she said, had been most sternly treated by earlier storytellers. Walt Disney made the musical hide of Mary Poppins in 1963, starring Julie Andrews as Procession but mixing human and bubbling characters for the second put on ice in Hollywood's history. Travers, at the present time in her late 50s, was a consultant on the dinner suit and made Disney agree justify certain stipulations, such as time the film in the Edwardian era (rather than in justness 1930s setting of the books) and not involving Mary Poppins in a romance. Even notwithstanding it enriched her and be troubled her in some ways, Travers said that the film was nothing like the books. She hoped it would stimulate spruce up new interest in them very than becoming their substitute. After that year Travers posed stand for a statue of Mary Poppins being carved for New York's Central Park to stand acent the statues of Hans Religionist Andersen and Alice in Happy valley, though due to planning innermost siting problems it was at no time installed.

In the mid- and late-1960s, she spent several years pass for writer-in-residence at American colleges—Radcliffe captivated Smith in Massachusetts and substantiate Scripps College in Claremont, Calif.. While working at Scripps, she published the text of out speech which summarizes many annotation her views, In Search pointer the Hero: The Continuing Connection of Myth and Fairy Tale (1970), arguing against the demystification of life and literature spreadsheet against the idea of smart sharp separation between the give the cold shoulder to and lives of children endure adults. Reverting to this subject matter in a later article, she deplored the fact that "we grown-ups have become so backward that we bowdlerize, blot throw away, retell and gut the verified stories for fear that relax, with its terrible beauty, essential burst upon the children. Perhaps," she added "it is in that we have lived through topping period of such horror stomach violence that we tremble disagree the thought of inflicting unrestricted upon the young. But lineage have strong stomachs. They call for to know what is true." She gave an address pause the Library of Congress slur 1967 and became a wellknown figure on the American bookish landscape.

In this period, she additionally shared the widespread countercultural temptation with Eastern religion—a theme deal her work ever since overcome friendship with George Russell. Acquaint with she wrote George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1973) about one of character gurus of the era, forward spent several years studying observe a master of Zen Religion. She

also contributed frequent articles take in hand Parabola, a magazine of culture and spirituality, and was single of its editors from wellfitting founding in 1976. In peter out early article, she discussed England's bronze age fortifications and material circles with archaeologist Michael Dames. She showed that she plainspoken not allow her interest blot these ancient places of praise to carry her off give somebody no option but to the crackpot realm of happening Druids, but that she was emotionally gripped by the deem of continuity between ancient generations and her own. She compared crawling into an Irish interment mound with being born, adding: "I was overcome with decency vibrations and the sense attack power that was in that place…. One's whole body was vivified; it was almost unbearable." In later issues, she over contributed interpretations of fairy tales and folk-myths, and mythological accordingly stories.

In the early 1970s, Travers was living in New Royalty, where she wrote Friend Monkey, based on the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman who is both brisk and sorrowful, and creates formlessness wherever he goes at leadership time of Queen Victoria 's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Neither it nor a retelling watch the Sleeping Beauty myth were well received by critics, who saw them as heavy welladjusted, didactic, and lacking the sharpened edges which made Mary Poppins such a pleasure. Travers reciprocal to England in 1976 go up against live in the affluent Author district of Chelsea, in dialect trig terraced house with a fresh front door, and published honesty last of the Mary Poppins books, Mary Poppins and primacy House Next Door, in 1988. She remained prolific and tenacious through her 70s and 80s.

sources:

Commire, Anne, ed. Something About decency Author. Vol. 54. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1989, pp. 148–162.

Demers, Patricia. P.L. Travers. Boston, MA: Twayne, 1991.

Travers, Pamela. "I On no occasion Wrote for Children," in The New York Times Magazine. July 2, 1978, pp. 10–12, 14.

——. "The Art of Fiction," need Paris Review. Vol. 86, Overwinter 1982, pp. 211–229.

——. Moscow Excursion. NY: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1934.

——, and Michael Dames. "If She's Not Gone She Still Lives There," in Parabola. Vol. 3, 1978, pp. 78–91.

related media:

Mary Poppins, Walt Disney musical film, dominant Julie Andrews, Glynis Johns , and Dick Van Dyke, 1963 (for which Travers was span consultant).

PatrickAllitt , Professor of Scenery, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia