P. L. Travers

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Lore & Background

Helen Lyndon Goff was born on 9 August 1899 in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia, at her family's home (not above a bank). Her father, Travers Robert Goff, was a bank manager who struggled with alcoholism and died in January 1907, an event she struggled to come to terms with for six years. She began writing as a teenager and worked briefly as a professional actress, touring with a Shakespearean company and performing in other roles, taking the stage name 'Pamela Lyndon Travers' (the pen name 'P. L. Travers' came later for her writing). At age 24 she immigrated to England, settling in London. There she met poet George William Russell, who published her poems in the Irish Statesman, and through him met W. B. Yeats and other Irish poets. She also became a disciple of occultist George Ivanovich Gurdjieff and studied under Carl Gustav Jung. In the winter of 1933, while living in a small house in the village of Mayfield, East Sussex, she began writing Mary Poppins. Walt Disney contacted her about film rights to Mary Poppins; after years of negotiations conducted through letters and meetings in the U.S. (Disney did not visit her in London; Travers visited Disney's studio in California), he obtained the rights and the film premiered in 1964. Travers later served as writer-in-residence at Radcliffe College from 1965 to 1966, and as a visiting lecturer at Smith College in 1965, and served as a contributing editor and later consulting editor for Parabola: the Magazine of Myth and Tradition from 1976 until her death.

Reader's Guide

P. L. Travers is primarily significant for creating the Mary Poppins series, which became a global cultural phenomenon through the 1964 Disney film adaptation. Her work drew on her interest in mythology and folklore, shaped by her encounters with Irish poets, Gurdjieff, and Jung. The 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks dramatized her negotiations with Disney, and a 2018 sequel, Mary Poppins Returns, continued the story. A stage musical adaptation opened in London's West End in 2004 and on Broadway in 2006. Travers' legacy also includes her editorial role at Parabola magazine and her contributions to children's literature, though she is most widely remembered for the magical nanny who has appeared in books, film, and stage for decades.

Did You Know?

• Travers took her stage name 'Pamela' because she thought it a 'pretty' name that 'flowed' with Travers.
• Her father, Travers Robert Goff, was demoted from bank manager to bank clerk; the cause is not definitively established as solely alcoholism.
• Travers spent two summers living among the Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo peoples studying their mythology and folklore.
• She served as a contributing editor and later consulting editor for Parabola: the Magazine of Myth and Tradition from 1976 until her death.

Roots in the Australian Bush

Helen Lyndon Goff was born on 9 August 1899 in Maryborough, Queensland, at her family's home, which was the manager's upstairs residence at a bank. Her father, Travers Robert Goff, a London-born man of Irish descent, was unsuccessful as a bank manager owing to his alcoholism and was eventually demoted to bank clerk. Her mother, Margaret Agnes Goff, was of Scottish and Irish descent and the sister of Boyd Dunlop Morehead, Premier of Queensland from 1888 to 1890. The family lived in Maryborough until Goff was three, then relocated to Brisbane in 1902. Her sister Barbara Moriarty was born shortly after. In mid-1905 Goff went to spend time with her great-aunt Ellie in Sydney. Later that year, the family moved to Allora, Queensland. Because Goff was often left alone by parents caught up in their own importance, she developed a form of self-sufficiency and an idiosyncratic fantasy life, often pretending to be a mother hen for hours. She claimed she could read at three years old and particularly enjoyed fairy tales. Though born in Australia, she considered herself British and later expressed the sentiment that her birth had been 'misplaced'.

From Stage to Page

She joined a Shakespearean company run by Allan Wilkie based in Sydney, debuting as Anne Page in a March 1921 performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor. It was around this time she chose the stage name 'Pamela Lyndon Travers', taking Travers from her father's name and Pamela because she thought it a 'pretty' name that 'flowed' with Travers. She toured New South Wales beginning in early 1921 and returned to Wilkie's troupe in Sydney by April 1922. That month, a critic for Frank Morton's Triad wrote that her performance as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream was 'all too human'. The troupe traveled to New Zealand, where a journalist for The Sun in Christchurch had one of her poems published. Back in Sydney, she contributed to the Shakespeare Quarterly, Vision, and The Green Room, and maintained a column called 'Pamela Passes: the Sun's Sydney Letter' in the Sun. The Triad published her poem 'Mother Song' in March 1922 under the name 'Pamela Young Travers'. The Bulletin published her poem 'Keening' on 20 March 1923, and she became a frequent contributor. In May 1923 she found employment at the Triad, where she was given discretion to fill at least four pages of a women's section titled 'A Woman Hits Back' every issue.

The Long Road to Mary Poppins

On 9 February 1924, Travers left Australia for England, settling in London. She only revisited Australia once, in the 1960s. For four years she wrote poetry for the Irish Statesman, beginning while in Ireland in 1925 when she met poet George William Russell, who accepted some of her poems for publication. Through Russell she met W. B. Yeats, Oliver St. John Gogarty and other Irish poets. After visiting Fontainebleau in France, she met George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, an occultist, of whom she became a 'disciple'. Around the same time she was taught by Carl Gustav Jung in Switzerland. In 1931, she moved with her friend Madge Burnand to a thatched cottage in Sussex. There, in the winter of 1933, she began to write Mary Poppins. The book was published in 1934 with great success. During World War II, Travers worked for the British Ministry of Information, spending five years in the US. Walt Disney contacted her about selling to Walt Disney Productions the rights for a film adaptation of Mary Poppins. After years of contact, which included visits to Travers at her home in London, Walt Disney obtained the rights and the film Mary Poppins premiered in 1964.

A Legacy That Keeps Returning

Travers died on 23 April 1996. In 2004, a stage musical adaptation of the books and the film opened in the West End; it premiered on Broadway in 2006. A film based on Disney's efforts to persuade Travers to sell him the Mary Poppins film rights was released in 2013, Saving Mr. Banks, in which Travers is portrayed by Emma Thompson. In a 2018 sequel to the original film, Mary Poppins Returns, Poppins, played by Emily Blunt, returns to help the Banks family once again. Her birthplace, the Australian Joint Stock Bank Building in Maryborough, is on the Queensland State Heritage Register.