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

Valerie Lawson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2006

The story of Mary Poppins, the quintessentially English and utterly magical children's nanny, is remarkable enough. 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 starring role in Walt Disney's hugely successful and equally classic film. Now she is a Broadway sensation all over again.

But the story of Mary Poppins's creator, as this first biography reveals, is just as unexpected and remarkable. The fabulous English nanny was conceived by an Australian, Pamela Lyndon Travers, who in 1924 came to London from Sydney as a journalist. She became involved with theosophy and traveled in the literary circles of W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Most famously, she clashed with "the great convincer" Walt Disney over the adaptation of the Mary Poppins books into film.

Travers, whom Disney accused of vanity for "thinking you [Travers] know more about Mary Poppins than I do," was as tart and opinionated as Julie Andrews's big-screen Mary Poppins was cheery and porcelain beautiful. "You've got the nose for it," Travers candidly assessed the star. Yet it was a love of mysticism and magic that shaped P. L. Travers's life as well as the character of Mary Poppins. The clipped, strict and ultimately mysterious nanny was the conception of someone who remained thoroughly inscrutable and enigmatic to the end of her ninety-six years.

"Who is P. L. Travers?" the American press inquired of "this unknown Englishwoman" whose creation resulting in Hollywood gold had won her international fame. Valerie Lawson's illuminating biography, Mary Poppins, She Wrote, provides the first and only glimpse into the mind of a writer who fervently believed that "Everyday life is the miracle."

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The original Mary Poppins was not as "saccharine" as the movie character, says Lawson, and her bittersweet biography of the supernanny's elusive creator, Travers (1899–1996), convincingly portrays a writer who created her character out of the childhood sorrows that haunted her. Drawing on archival sources and private papers, Lawson, a writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, sensitively traces Travers's emotionally deprived girlhood in Australia, where she was raised largely by an elderly aunt; her early career as an actress and columnist; and her 1924 emigration to London, where she worked as a journalist and theater reviewer. Emphasizing how Travers's desire for the father who had died when she was seven affected both her life and work, Lawson explores mythological and literary influences on the six Mary Poppins stories, written over 54 years (the first was published in 1934). Never married, Travers adopted an Irish baby boy; Lawson movingly reveals the emotional fallout of their failed relationship. After detailing Travers's fussy movie negotiations with Walt Disney and the downplaying of her authorship in the 1964 hit film, Lawson captures the melancholy of Travers's retreat into isolation and old age. 2 photo inserts. (Oct. 14)
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From Booklist

This ambitious biography of P. L. Travers was first published in Australia in 1999. The occasion for this American edition is the imminent opening of the Broadway musical version of Travers' timeless, "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" tales of Mary Poppins, the imperious nanny who arrived one morning on the East Wind. It turns out there was a lot of the difficult Travers in Poppins. The early death of Pamela's father (she was born Helen Lyndon Goff in Australia) left the family dependent on wealthy Great-Aunt Ellie, another early inspiration for Poppins. The untimely bereavement also inspired Travers' lifelong search for a father substitute, first in the Irish poet AE (George Russell) and later in such dubious gurus as Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti. The translation of the Poppins stories into the celebrated Disney film brought Travers a decade of international fame, which had declined considerably by the time of her death at age 96 in 1996. This meticulously researched but overlong biography may help restore a diminished literary reputation, but its unsparing portrait of an exceedingly unsympathetic human being will win Travers no new posthumous friends. Michael Cart
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (October 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743298160
• ISBN-13: 978-0743298162
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,228,109 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Valerie Lawson has won awards for her poetry and performance at the Cambridge Poetry Awards and has been twice nominated for Pushcart Prizes. Dog Watch, her first full-length collection of poems was published in 2007 by Ragged Sky Press. She is currently working on a manuscript of poems about winter in far Downeast Maine.
Lawson has performed her poetry at First Night Boston, the Boston Center for the Arts Fringe Festival, at the Bank of Ireland Center and Mansion House in Dublin, at the Swedish National Poetry Slam, and regularly at Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway Theater with Doc Brown's Traveling Poetry Show. In 2008, Lawson was invited to the First Women of the World International Poetry Slam in Detroit as a Legacy Poet.
Lawson, along with her partner Michael Brown, co-edits the literary journal Off the Coast (www.off-the-coast.com).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars STILL AN ENIGMA, October 17, 2006

By 

Mr. Borderman (Illinois) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers (Hardcover)

Valerie Lawson has done something P. L. Travers claimed she didn't want anyone to do: write her biography. It's a very good book. Travers discouraged personal questions in interviews, and preferred to discuss her work and, in later years, her philosophy of life -- the essence of experience as opposed to the mundane details of living. Lawson makes the case that if Travers had been serious about this she would have destroyed her papers -- which she decidedly did not do. Whatever her true feelings on the matter, this is a fascinating book, filled with insights into Travers' life and work, and with a respectable amount of attention to the work itself, especially the meanings and importance of the Mary Poppins books.

I think Lawson gives somewhat short shrift to Travers work with Parabola magazine, which is some of her most brilliant writing -- inspiring to thousands of her readers, and collected in the now out of print "What the Bee Knows." (Note to publishers: bring it back!) You may also find out more than you want to known about her endless toing and froing with Disney, and the ways in which the movie deal echoed through the last thirty years of her life.

But Lawson also gives the first comprehensive account of Travers' private life, her involvement AE and Gurdieff, her adoption of one twin, her son Camillus, and her early career as an actress. Her love affairs are touched on.

I'm not sure, in the end, if all the private matters, interesting as they may be, really add to our understanding of Travers' work, though Lawson makes some persuasive connections between the fantasy and the reality. Mary Poppins herself, the Great Exception, survives the biography with her mystery intact, and in spite of Lawson's sympathetic and thorough craftsmanship, so does Travers. For those of us lucky ones who count Travers as a touchstone in our lives, that's just fine. Questions without answers can often be more satisfying than the other kind.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Primer, January 23, 2010

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V. Nolan "samfan" (Hackensack, NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers (Paperback)

For anyone who loves Mary Poppins, in any or all of her incarnations, this book serves as a great introduction to the evolution of the character. The biography paints a great portrait of the woman best known as the creator of Mary Poppins, while being quite blunt about her shortcomings, personality quirks, and key moments and people in her life which are all reflected somewhere in the text of the Mary Poppins books. Knowing what makes this author tick makes reading the Poppins books themselves a more meaningful experience as the reader can harken back to anecdotes and philosophies that Travers liberally sprinkled throughout the world of Cherry Tree Lane.

My favorite part of the book is the no-holds-barred retelling of Travers' negotiations with Walt Disney for the move rights, and subsequent alienation she encountered while becoming a thorn in the side to the production, so much so that she wasn't invited to the Hollywood premiere and almost literally crashed the event. This reaffirms everything I know from listening to the commentary of the film, as well as the Sherman Brothers remembrances of Travers' less than helpful suggestions for the movie.

If you love to hear about the behind-the-scenes goings on on film sets as much as I do, the chapter on the Disney movie will be a favorite.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Some Light on and Elusive Personality, May 9, 2007

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Loves the View "Louise" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers (Hardcover)

Lawson provides some information on a fellow Australian, who despite protestations to the contrary, may have wanted someone to present a biography of her. Travers left notes and diaries but it appears to be information and not real knowledge. Her life was mirage, down to her name, national allegiance and way of relating to her mentors, adopted son and sponsor, Walt Disney and his staff.

The book tells the story as much as it can be told.