Shepard, Mary, 1909-2000

Biographical Note on P. L. Travers from "Guide to the papers of P L Travers in the Mitchell Library State Library of New South Wales":

P L (Pamela Lyndon) Travers, the creator of the well - known nanny Mary Poppins, was born Helen Lyndon Goff in Maryborough, Queensland on 9 August 1899. While the name Travers is a family name which she adopted, there is no explanation for her other adopted name, Pamela, which she rarely uses preferring to be known as P L. Little is known of Travers' family and personal life despite the fact that she stems from a long established family. Her great grandfather, Robert Archibald Morehead, came to Australia in 1841 as manager of the Scottish Australian Company. His considerable holdings eventually included Bowen Downs, the largest pastoral station in Australia. Morehead's elder son Robert was Travers' grandfather. Robert's daughter Margaret was Travers' mother.Travers' father, Travers Robert Goff, died while his three daughters, of whom P L Travers is the eldest, were quite young. Irish born, he had migrated to Australia after a period spent tea picking in Ceylon. After her father's death, Travers moved with her mother and sisters to New South Wales. She went to school at Normanhurst in Sydney. While still in her teens, Travers' poems and articles began to appear in Australian newspapers and magazines. She later wrote for both the Bulletin and Triad. For approximately two years she wrote a human interest column for a daily newspaper. She worked in the cashier's office of the Australian Gas & Light Company and, briefly during the early 1920s, she toured New South Wales as an actor and dancer with the Alan Wilkie Shakespearean Touring Company. In 1924 Travers left Australia for England. Since that time she lived in England and, periodically, in the United States. Around 1960 she made her only return visit to Australia. In Ireland in 1925 she met the poet George Russell (AE) who, as editor of The Irish Statesman, had accepted some of her poems for publication and invited her to Dublin. Through Russell, Travers met W B Yeats and other Irish poets who fostered her interest in and knowledge of world mythology. Many of her own poems appeared in The Irish Statesman and a number of anthologies. Travers' first real literary success was the 1934 publication of Mary Poppins. Like later books in the series, Mary Poppins was illustrated by Mary Shepard, the daughter of Ernest Shepard who illustrated A A Milne's Winnie the Pooh books. Translated into more than a dozen languages, Mary Poppins was popular throughout the world. It was followed in 1935 by a sequel, Mary Poppins Comes Back. The tetralogy was completed with the publication of Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1944) and Mary Poppins in the Park (1952). Four other Mary Poppins titles have been published, the latest Mary Poppins and the House Next Door, in 1989. Although unhappy with the 1964 Disney film version of Mary Poppins, despite her own involvement with the production, the film stimulated wider public interest in P L Travers and her work. It is from this time that articles by Travers about her work began to appear in magazines and journals. She received invitations to lecture in the United States and was Writer in Residence at Radcliffe Hall, Harvard University (1965 -1966) and at Smith College (1966). Travers made frequent visits to the United States where she lived during World War II, and from 1969 until 1977. Myth and fairy tale, important elements in the original Mary Poppins books, recur in Travers' later works, notably Friend Monkey (1971), a novel in three parts based on the monkey god Hanuman from the Indian epic Ramayana; and About the Sleeping Beauty (1975) containing six versions of the fairy tale including one by Travers herself. P L Travers was honoured with an OBE in 1977 for her contribution to literature. In 1978 she was installed as a Doctor of Humanities at Chatham College, Pittsburg, USA. She died in 1996.