- Born
- Died
- Birth nameHelen Lyndon Goff
- P.L. Travers was born on August 9, 1899 in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia. She was a writer, known for Mary Poppins (1964), Mary Poppins Returns (2018) and Studio One (1948). She died on April 23, 1996 in Chelsea, London, England, UK.
- Developed the character of Mary Poppins in 1934, while living in a 900 year old thatched cottage in Sussex, recovering from an illness.
- Had a lifelong fascination with folklore and mysticism. In 1976, she became consulting editor for the New York-based journal 'Parabola', dedicated to empirical research in this field.
- Disliked the 1964 Disney film Mary Poppins (1964), as she felt it made the title character, whom she had created in her books, too sweet.
- Born to an Irish-born sugar planter and a Scottish-Irish mother, she grew up in tropical Queensland on her father's plantation, the eldest of three daughters.
- She was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1977 Queen's New Year Honours List for her services to literature.
- For me there are no answers, only questions, and I am grateful that the questions go on and on. I don't look for an answer, because I don't think there is one. I'm very glad to be the bearer of a question.
- You can ask me anything you like about my work, but I'll never talk about myself.
- You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for - if you are honest - you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one.
- A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.
- [on having witnessed the Disney version of her most famous work] Why was Mary Poppins, already beloved for what she was - plain, vain and incorruptible - transmogrified into a soubrette?
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