To ona napisała Mary Poppins. Życie P.L. Travers

by Valerie Lawson, Bogumiła Nawrot (Translator)

Magiczne triki Mary Poppins przypominają zmiany, jakie dokonywały się w życiu autorki. Z Australii wywędrowała do Londynu i wymarzonej Irlandii, a nawet Ameryki; z aktoreczki i dziennikarki – zmieniła się w namaszczoną przez największe umysły Wielkiej Brytanii poetkę i pisarkę, nieustannie poszukującą swojej duchowej drogi. Surowy ton, niemodny strój i wątpliwą urodę odziedziczyła Mary Poppins po stryjecznej babce autorki, która wychowała ją, a wcześniej jej matkę. Tajemniczość, oschłość i próżność to cechy przejęte w genach od samej Travers. Figurę zawdzięcza zaś rysunkom Mary Shepard, córki słynnego ilustratora książek o Kubusiu Puchatku. Popularność to zasługa Walta Disneya, który upupił Mary Poppins i przyprawił jej słodką buzię Julie Andrews. Historia obrony angielskiej niani przed amerykanizacją to w książce tylko jeden rozdział, Disney nakręcił o tym cały film. W Ratując pana Banksa Emma Thompson sugestywnie odegrała czarującą, a zarazem irytującą pisarkę.

Travers nie życzyła sobie, by powstała o niej biografia, a jednak zgromadziła tyle pamiątek i dokumentów, że trudno uwierzyć w szczerość jej deklaracji. Valerie Lawson dostała jak na tacy mnóstwo rękopisów, notesów, listów. Utkała z nich rzetelną, a przy tym niezwykle fascynującą historię życia Helen Lyndon Goff, która niczym pod wpływem magii zmieniła się w P.L. Travers.

Rok 1964 przyniósł w filmowym świecie słynną nianię. Film wyprodukowany przez Walta Disney`a był prawdziwym wydarzeniem. Mary Poppins otrzymała twarz Julie Andrews. W rzeczywistości wyglądała jak ciotka małej Margaret, bo takie imię nosiła w rzeczywistości Pamela Lyndon.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, History, Historical, Autobiography, Writing

440 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1999

Reviews

[Margaret · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found Lawson's thoughts on Travers' work (the Mary Poppins books particularly) interesting and worth reading (especially the section on the making of the Mary Poppins film), but I didn't think she did as good a job on her life or character.

Although Lawson reports the surface of Travers' life in great detail, there's little insight into Travers' emotional life; her need for a male mentor is simplistically (and repetitively) referred to as a search for "Mr. Banks" (clearly equated with her banker father). Her adopted son, Camillus, floats in and out of the pages of the book almost randomly, with no extended examination of their often troubled relationship. I finished the book feeling as though I had acquired a few more facts about Travers, but little more understanding of her complex personality.

Also, there are odd little errors throughout (which makes me wonder how many I didn't catch): Lawson identifies Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" and "The Snow Queen" as by the Brothers Grimm (claiming that Travers preferred the Grimms' "black" tales to the "blander, saccharine whiteness of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy stories"), she calls "Bambi" a "feel-good film about childhood" and "The Three Little Pigs" a full-length movie like "Snow White", and claims that Disney began making fairy tales and children's classics into full-length movies in the 1950s -- um, no, what about "Pinocchio" and "Snow White"?

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm giving up on this book after two months of trying to get interested in it. I got about halfway through, and that was a struggle. It turns out that I really want to read literary criticism, not a biography. Also, Travers wrote a lot for newspapers and magazines, but not in such a way that interested me. i really only wanted to read about her writing Mary Poppins and its sequels. Those are my failings.

I will say that another reason I gave up on the book is that the writing was sloppy. The author kept referring to every male figure in Travers's life as "her next Mr. Banks," which is confusing, because unlike in the film, the Mr. Banks of the books is fairly innocuous. He is a father to the children, and an employer to Poppins, but he doesn't have the impact as the character does in the film. The comparison to Travers's personal life and supposed search for a father figure seemed like a bit of a stretch. Also, ther writing was sloppy, with factual errors.

Granted, I will freely admit that this is all based on the first half of the book. It may have gotten wonderful in the second half.

[Lizzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Mary Poppins books were part of my childhood. I didn't actually like Mary Poppins herself – she was scary and mean – but I liked the adventures she took the Banks children on. Their combination of magic with ordinary life is the kind of fantasy I like. It turns out my mother grew up with Mary Poppins, too. One night her father was listening to Alexander Woollcott's "Town Crier" radio show and he reviewed this new kid's book. My grandfather bought it and read a bit to my mother every night. She knew how to read, and one day she was curious about the rest of the story and finished the book. She says she realized later it kind of hurt her dad's feelings, and she felt bad. Anyway, my mom still says "She's perfect, perfect in every way" and other lines from the book.
So I eagerly looked for this biography. It covers the main facts of P. L. Travers' life pretty well, but lacks insight in a lot of areas.
Pamela Travers, born Helen Lyndon Goff, grew up in Australia where her father was a failed bank manager. She began publishing poems as a young woman and had a fairly successful acting career. Then she moved to England and continued to write professionally. She met the poet George William Russell who published some of her poems and through him, other Irish poets. A lifelong seeker, she was a student of the mystic mystic George Gurdjieff for a while. In 1934 she published the first Mary Poppins book. She continued to write for the rest of her life. I rediscovered her in the 80s when her essays about mythology appeared in Parabola magazine.
In her later years she was a writer in residence at several colleges, with varied success. She tended to view herself as a great writer the students should approach, and waited for them to come pay homage. Students were intimidated and annoyed by her imperious manner and stayed away.
Lawson refers to Travers' relationships with older male mentor figures as her "search for Mr. Banks." This doesn’t make sense, as Mr. Banks in the books seems to me to be an insignificant character, always absent minded and dreaming.
Lawson is openly scornful of Gurdjieff and seems to think he was some kind of charlatan. I can't vouch for his character but I've read a fair amount about him and his students, and that's not my impression of him. Lawson’s also somewhat dismissive about Travers’ essays for Parabola magazine, saying their references to myths and world religions were obscure. I didn’t find them so, and they were suited to a journal about mysticism and world religion.
The biggest omission is that she doesn't talk about the kind of mother Travers was. At age 40 she adopted an Irish baby boy, separating him from his twin. The boys met by chance when they were teenagers, and her son was furious that she'd never told him he had a twin. That appeared to cause a break between them, but a few chapters later Lawson mentions the son doing things with her as though nothing happened. Maybe there was no dramatic reconciliation, but it could have been described better.
More than that, there's nothing about her as a mother. Was she strict like Mary Poppins? “Snip snap, off to bed.” Did she tell stories? I assumed this omission must be because the son hadn't cooperated with the biography. But in the acknowledgments he's listed as the person who gave the most help.
I was pleased that Travers hated the Disney Mary Poppins movie as much as I did. I distinctly remember leaving Grauman's Chinese Theater feeling very annoyed that they'd gotten it wrong, because Mary Poppins is strict and mean, not cheery and smiling. There's a lot of interesting stuff about how the movie came to be made and the process of making it into a film.

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oct 31 ~~ review asap.
Nov 1 ~~ A recent reading project was a few of the Mary Poppins books and this bio of the author. I had grown up with the Disney movie version of MP and never even knew she had first made her appearance in a book originally published in the mid-1930's.

By the time I finished the stories I was eager to learn more about the author and how she created Mary. The book starts off by explaining PLT's childhood, which was not as normal as it could have been, and affected our future author deeply. So much so that for the rest of her life she searched for a father substitute and never seemed to understand who she herself was. I felt sorry for her right away, but when she still hadn't sorted herself out by the time she was very much older, I couldn't seem to keep from being annoyed with her.

Many features that we all identify with Mary Poppins began in the author's childhood. That umbrella with the parrot-head handle? A household servant had one that she used on her afternoons out, and young PLT was enchanted by it even though her father ridiculed her for admiring it so much. That egotistic, snooty quality that MP has in the books? That was thanks to a great-aunt who sniffed down her nose at everyone. All the fascination with flying and the stars? The source for these obsessions was trying to figure out the death of her father when she was a mere girl.

All these aspects showed up in the first hundred or so pages, but I found some very interesting analysis of the whys and wherefores of MP beginning on page 144.

And I'm afraid that after the next few pages I had a harder time staying interested in the book. There was a great deal of minute detail about the people PLT became involved with over the years; a lot of name-dropping, and an exhaustive explanation of nearly every move PLT made during the rest of her life. I had so much trouble paying attention that I resorted to skimming through the rest of the book and calling it quits. Sort of a semi-DNF, I guess.

[Rosemary Atwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Out of the Sky She Came’ (later retitled as above ‘Mary Poppins, She Wrote’) is journalist/author and ballet aficionado Valerie Lawson’s biography of the notoriously prickly and sadly misdirected author/journalist/dancer and Shakespearean actress P.L. Travers.

Unsurprisingly, the original Mary Poppins is a far more nuanced character with many of P.L’s own traits and interests, steeped in myth and esoteric knowledge - the eponymous protagonist of a number of well-loved books not even purportedly written for children. They are the creation of an intriguing but self-absorbed narcissist, a monster of her own making and the unlikeable heroine of Lawson’s biography.

In many ways this difficulty is circumvented by concentrating on P.L’s endless search for fulfilment outside writing - through her embrace of Ireland and the Celtic twilight literary movement, the teachings of George Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti (she was a disciple of both), Zen Buddhism and the ultimately tragic adoption of one of a pair of Irish twins, John Camillus Hone.

The result is a surprisingly fluid mingling of literary trends, spiritual teachings and popular culture (in the shape of Walt Disney and the adaptation of her work for the screen). An absorbing read and - given the complexity of its subject - a very recommendable biography.

[Jennifer Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

who's the real Mary Poppins?

There's only one person who can answer that- the woman who dreamed up Mary Poppins in the first place- P.L. Travers. I picked up Mary Poppins She Wrote by Valerie Lawson to get some answers..

To say that P.L. Travers was a big eccentric is understating. Travers, using a name of her own invention, always insisted upon mystery and anonimity. (Which, upon reading this made me feel slightly guilty for reading her biography... not guilty enough to STOP mind you.) She refused to give her date of birth, reveal her real name and even admit where she was from (Australia), frequently giving misleading and incorrect answers during many of her interviews, which she hardly could tolerate. A deeply intellectual woman, who followed the teachings of various guru's in her life, she always seemed to be on a quest to discover who she was both physically and spirtually. Travers never married, instead choosing to have lovers and eventually adopting a son. Whether it was because she was such an intellectual who valued introspection, or a product of her strict victorian upbring, Travers was a rather harsh and sever personality.

The book suggests, and cannot assert since Travers herself would never clarify, that Mary Poppins character is both the nanny she always longed for and a mixture of her Aunt Ellie. Mary seems to embody the characteristics Travers admired in othere female figures in her life. Travers was fiercely protective of her Poppins, insisting that the woman was no beautiful or cheery, but more "crone" like- a state Travers admired. She was highly combatitive with Disney in regards to the movie and throughout her later years severely critisized the Disney adaption of her book. (Despite the fact that Disney's movie ensured her a very comfortable life from that point on.)

Obviously I enjoyed this book, (look how long the recap is), it was very informative and sine Travers herself was such a character, it's hard no to find her rather unusual life interesting. This is one of those "I did not see that coming" biographies. The biography itself is not always an easy read. The author switches between writing it as a factual account and then she will switch to a different writing style and write the biography more as an omniscient story- which reads awkwardly. I feel like if the biographer kept more with the facts and less with the stylized writing it would have been a better read. P.L. Travers? Interesting. Biographer (Valerie Lawson)-- needs a better editor. I'm giving this book a 6/10- I was fascinated by the topic but sometimes a little lost by the writer's style. I'd recommend it for biography lovers, (lots of juicy stuff), and for Poppins fans alike!

[Kressel Housman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I became interested in this book because of the biopic about Pamela Travers, “Saving Mr. Banks,” but what turned it into a must-read was finding out from other reviews that Travers was a devotee of Gurdjieff. I dabbled in the Gurdjieff method myself in college, and I had been profoundly affected by the adventure with Maia in Mary Poppins as a child, so I wondered: did P.L. Travers plant a seed in my soul that led me to her own spiritual path a decade later? Upon reading her biography, my conclusion is, “not directly,” but she was one quirky seeker of a woman, and I was one quirky seeker of a kid. It’s no wonder that her work spoke to me and that the yearning in each of us would lead us to some similar places. The difference is: she remained a devotee of the method until her death in her mid-nineties. To paraphrase another reviewer, just as Walt Disney over-sweetened the character of Mary Poppins and took away all her sharpness, “Saving Mr. Banks” left Pamela Travers her fussiness but took away her kooky, mystical side, which was a major part of her life. Not only was she a lifelong member of a Gurdjieff school, she lived near a Native American reservation for a time to learn their lessons, and spent her old age in the “New Age.”

Miss Travers said that women pass through three stages in their lives – nymph, mother, and crone – so the book is divided into three sections with those names. Her childhood in Australia falls under the “nymph” section, but more in keeping with the connotation of the word, it goes into her twenties and thirties with romantic encounters with both men and women. Thankfully, none of it is too graphic.

The “mother” section is about her relationship with her adopted son. An online search will lead you to interviews with him bad-mouthing her, but the book shows the affection they shared in his childhood. They had their rocky periods, but he was with her the day before she died, so the estrangement couldn’t have been that bad.

“Crone,” of course, has negative connotations of an old hag, but Travers didn’t see it that way. She felt that as a woman aged, she became wiser, culminating the lessons she learned from the first two stages and in a position to share with the next generation. Reading that made me feel more at peace with aging, like it could be something to look forward to. The apex of her “crone” stage came shortly after the movie made her famous and Radcliffe College invited her to be “writer in residence” for a semester. Young women visited and asked for her wisdom on writing, living, magic, and myth. She enjoyed the experience so much, she offered herself to other colleges afterward. Some of them accepted, but it was never as good as Radcliffe, where she was actually invited. She probably was as bristly and off-putting as the movie “Saving Mr. Banks” made her out to be.

One thing Travers was always defensive about was the label “children’s writer.” She insisted her messages were for adults. Of course, the bulk of her readers probably are children, but I recently re-read parts of Mary Poppins Comes Back, specifically the birth of Annabel Banks, who explains the journey of her soul. I doubt I could have appreciated the depth of that message in my childhood, so perhaps Travers was right. When she went to a Jungian analyst, he told her that all she needed was to read her own books. Yes, they were full of fun and fancy, but they also drew on folklore and myth. Mary Poppins and her measuring tape that sized up the Banks kids’ characters sounded very like Gurdjieff getting his disciples to develop “true objectivity.” So difficult a person as Pamela Travers may have been, she had legitimate reason to be disappointed in Disney’s treatment of her work. His magic made her rich and famous, but her own vision was much deeper and more spiritual.

[Sharon Gray · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book after seeing the movie Saving Mr. Banks, which had both an excellent cast and strong writing. I normally love biographies, but this one honestly was boring and difficult to finish. The author, Valerie Lawson, did lots of research, and at times tried (rather heavy handedly) to make a story out of the material, but in reality, it comes across as disjointed and confusing. She seems to cite almost EVERYTHING, but at other times makes blanket statements that left me wondering where that information came from. She hinted at possible lesbian/bi-sexual relationships, but maddeningly never makes a case either way. At one point she alludes to more shocking material in a diary of one of Pamela's friends, but she never mentions it again. She discusses a photo taken of Pamela topless, but despite the fact that she has several photos in the book, this one isn't. She gives a lot of background information on several people important to Pamela (as she calls her though out most of the book), but other significant characters are introduced and then abandoned. Even Pamela's adopted son is somewhat of an enigma, and their relationship is never really explored. I understand that so much of the mystery and difficulty in writing this would stem from the apparent fact that Travers intentionally either participated in misinformation about herself or was just coyly secretive about her life. The bottom line is that I feel like I still don't really know much about Ms. Travers. Ms. Lawson quotes a review of one of Ms. Traver's later books (About Sleeping Beauty): "repetitious and windy....buried in self-infatuated blah." I felt that this summed up THIS book as well. Even though the movie is certainly fictionalized and "sanitized", it told more about her than this book did. Another reviewer here said save yourself some time and just read the Wikipedia article about P.L. Travers ~ I completely agree!

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know the expression, "S/he wore his/her learning lightly"? Well, in this book, Valerie Lawson does just the opposite...she wears her research heavily. So heavily that it weighs her down.

Parts of this biography were very interesting; unfortunately, what was most interesting was the analysis of the Mary Poppins books that P.L. Travers wrote and her experience of the making of the movie; in fact, on the last page comes the title of the movie about Travers, Disney, and the making of "Mary Poppins"--"Searching for Mr Banks".

Much of the book is inconsequential detail about elements surrounding Travers's life. While I came way with the uncomfortable sense that Travers was an egomaniacal "artiste" and a spiritual searcher, there is too much I still don't know. Maybe there is much to not know; that's fine--then pare the biography down to what is knowable. Or surmisable.

What I most came away with was wanting to revisit the Mary Poppins books and really, REALLY looking forward to the Emma Thompson portrayal of Travers next month.

[Akhet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read due to upcoming Disney picture "Saving Mr Banks." Film previews look great. The author did a good job researching and writing about someone who did not want to be known.

Learned from the book that PL Travers lived a rather sad lonely life. She was always looking for a solution to her health problems. It's a shame that she wasted a lot of her life going from one spiritual guru to another. Her life would have been much richer if she was more focused on others rather than her perceived short comings. She needed the Gospel.

[Kathryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I saw Saving Mr Banks earlier this year, which was based on this book, so I thought the book would be a very interesting read, however it started out quite a bit drier than I had anticipated. I did learn things about Pamela Travers which I hadn't been aware of previously, but she was very into esoteric and Eastern kinds of philosophy, which I found quite tedious and difficult to keep track of. Actually, I think I remember reading the Mary Poppins books many years ago and thinking they were a little odd, so perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised.

And in fact, Valerie Lawson does give a (somewhat repetitive, at times) recap of the Mary Poppins books, and while they are a bit strange, I felt this part of the book was an improvement on the depiction of PL Travers' early adult years through to middle age.

Continuing on, the book did improve slightly. I enjoyed the section describing the making of the book into the movie, and I can see that some liberties were taken with Saving Mr Banks, as there are various differences between it and Valerie Lawson's account from PL Travers' papers. I can understand why changes were made as the fiction definitely makes for a better, more interesting story than the truth!

P.L. Travers appears to be a bundle of contradictions - she claims she wants privacy and anonymity, but is upset when the acknowledgement of her contribution to the Mary Poppins is less obvious than that of Walt Disney's on advertisements; she doesn't mind talking to reporters, but only on her terms; she stated that she never wanted a biography written about her after her death, and yet sold all her papers, including personal papers and photographs, to Sydney's Mitchell Library, and so on.

Overall, I'm giving this book 2.5 stars. I enjoyed bits, but I found other bits just OK, if not downright tedious.

[Cathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

P.L. Travers Mary Poppins books are among my favorites, and I'm a great admirer of her lifelong quest to reveal the myth and folklore in our everyday human lives. I'd never wanted to read a biography of Travers, having learned my lesson to 'love the art, not the artist.' However, I was given Mary Poppins, She Wrote as a gift and, after letting it sit on the shelf next to my Poppins collection for several years, finally began to read. I wish I hadn't. There's nothing wrong with Lawson's account. All biographers are searching for connecting threads in an effort to explain this or that about their subjects. While I do think she may have overextended her reasoning at times, Lawson's story is probably as correct as anyone's. Travers was a famously elusive subject and cultivated an enigmatic personality. She was also, most likely, a lonely, somewhat self-centered woman, whose hopes were not always fulfilled. In short, she was a person -- a person who, by some beautiful bit of alchemy, created a lasting character and a wonderful story. My biggest gripe with Lawson's book are the occasional gaffs, suggesting that she didn't read the Poppins stories as carefully as a biographer should. Tell me whatever you want about P.L. Travers, but don't screw up Mary Poppins.

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since I was a child, I have loved P.L. Travers' original Mary Poppins stories.  Like many of my generation, I am sure, my first introduction to Mary Poppins was in the incredibly saccharine Disney film adaptation, but I was absolutely thrilled to discover the original, sassy Mary not long afterwards.  I know relatively little about the author, aside what I gleaned from the Saving Mr Banks film, and when I received a copy of journalist Valerie Lawson's Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers, I was eager to find out what else I would discover.

Helen Lyndon Goff, who later adopted the pen name Pamela Lyndon (P.L.) Travers, was born in Australia.  Her father, an Irishman 'nowhere near good enough', died in his early forties, 'his life unfulfilled, his family left destitute and forced onto the charity of rich but emotionally chilly relations.'  Travers was the eldest of three girls, and went to live with her maiden aunt for a time when her youngest sister was born, and again with her mother and siblings after her father died.  Travers moved to London in 1924, in order to pursue her career in journalism.  Here, she 'became involved with theosophy, traveled in the literary circles of W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot, and became a disciple of the famed spiritual guru Gurdjieff.'  She published the first Mary Poppins book in 1934.

We learn about Travers' ancestors very early on, as well as the ways in which their decisions affected her life, both as a young girl, and later as an adult.  After the passing of her father, she went through life determined to find her own 'Mr Banks', a father figure who would look after her.

In her preface, Lawson writes: '[Mary] Poppins has lasted because she is as peculiar as she is kind, as threatening as she is comforting, as stern as she is sensual, as elusive as she is matter of fact.'  She goes on to acknowledge that P.L. Travers stipulated that she 'did not want a biography written about her after her death'.  As is clear from her biographical subject, she disregarded this, and began her five-year "Pamela Hunt" that took her down 'unexpected paths, both geographically and emotionally...  Her life was much more than I ever imagined.  My life expanded in the writing of hers.' 

Mary Poppins, She Wrote has been split into three separate sections, which correspond to the three stages of womanhood which Travers believed in: 'The Nymph' (1899-1934), 'The Mother' (1934-1965), and 'The Crone' (1965-1996).  Some of the chapters open with an imagined narrative, which features Lyndon as a character.  These are often short, and I would argue that, although they are nicely written, they do not add a great deal to proceedings.

Lawson ponders throughout the various inspiration for Mary Poppins.  She writes of Travers' fascination for fairytales when she was a child: 'She liked the wickedest women most...  She was fascinated by the evil forces of the stories, the black sheep, the wicked fairy.'  She then goes on to examine the quite traumatic elements of Travers' childhood, and the effects of her 'cool yet unconventional parents', which culminated in her 'thriving on what was difficult.'  Throughout, there is a lot of literary criticism of the Mary Poppins books, as one might expect.  Whilst interesting, these sections are sometimes a little longwinded, and the details feel a little repetitive from time to time.  The same can be said for the exploration of Travers' forays into spirituality.

Mary Poppins, She Wrote has a rather low average rating on Goodreads.  Other reviewers have written about some of the qualms they had with Lawson's book; these almost always mention her exemplary research, but also her 'sloppy' writing, and a feeling of general disinterest in Travers' own work.  However, as the only comprehensive biography of the rather mysterious P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins, She Wrote is the tome which curious readers will inevitably pick up.  

I found the prose of Mary Poppins, She Wrote fitting given the subject matter, and was compelled to read the entirety of the book, but I must admit that after finishing it, I do not feel as though I know a great deal more about P.L. Travers.  Some elements of her life were glossed over, and I would have appreciated more depth of information throughout.  In consequence, Travers still comes across as a figure shrouded in mystery.  

Whilst interesting enough, Mary Poppins, She Wrote had an approach which was perhaps a little too detached.  It did not feel, at any point aside from what she stresses in her preface, that Lawson was really connected with Travers.  The construction of Mary Poppins, She Wrote is just a little too choppy.  I would not discourage anyone from reading it, as Travers was a fascinating woman by all accounts, but it is definitely not the most thorough work of biography which I have picked up this year.

[Beverley · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading this I didn't feel I knew P. L. Travers much better than I did before I started. Much of it seemed to be mini biographies of the significant men in her life, particularly AE. There was little about her personal life but what there was painted her as a not very likeable person. Disappointed in both the book and Travers.

[Edy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book and ended up quite disappointed. Lawson focused too much on Travers' early life and over analyzed every single event and idea. She especially over analyzed Travers' supposed "search for Mr. Banks", or rather a father figure. She always refers to every new adult male in travers life as "her next mr.banks". I don't believe that to be accurate at all. She loved her father and was not searching for a new father figure at all.

In addition, the writing style is similar to that of a research paper and quite boring and sloppy. She skips around too much and sometimes it is difficult to see where she is going with her point. Lawson also sometimes switches to what seems like a biography on other figures in travers life such as AE and Orage. Not to mention she compares Travers to St.Francis of Assisi and Jesus (pg 150).

One of the reasons I read this book was so that I could have some background before seeing the film "saving Mr.Banks", however it didn't prove to be helpful at all. I couldn't even finish the whole book. My suggestion is to go see "saving Mr.Banks" because it is truly an excellent film.

[lizeindisney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is 4 stars on personal preference. I struggle with the beginning part of biographies, before they did the amazing thing we know them for. So I struggled to get through the first 180 or so pages because I just really wanted to know about Mary Poppins. But I enjoyed it when it got there which is why I’ve given it 4 stars.

It’s a really detailed biography, I knew I wouldn’t like Pamela as a person from what I know from documentaries and Saving Mr Banks, but it was interesting to learn more about the person she was behind the books.

Paperback

[Kay · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a child I loved reading Mary Poppins and enjoyed the Disney movie. Last Summer when I saw the trailer for Saving Mr. Banks, I anxiously waited the next six months till it was released. I was not disappointed. After seeing the movie, I immediately [on the way home from the movies] checked Wikipekia on P.L. Travers and was hooked on learning more about her!

This book was so disappointing and a total bore! I've read other books on authors of the early 20th century and enjoyed them very much. Of course, they were American authors and they led such exciting lives. However, I will NOT say it's because she is English [bred anyway] and stuffy! I think the book was written with a lot of boring facts and very little insight into the author. I believe mostly notes of the author were used and no interviews with people who knew her [of course, those people would be deceased but I'm sure their descendants would have a few remarks]. Even her grandchildren or son was not interviewed.

If you want to know more about her life, read Wikipedia and spend 15 mins. than hours and hours of boredom!!!

[Zoe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Children's book authors seem to fall into two categories - well adjusted but complicated (Beatrix Potter, C.S. Lewis) or unhappy and complicated. Travers was definitely of the latter, and watching her eternal struggle to find happiness or at least contentment in the world started slow, but became completely gripping.
The early part of this book was rough - it read like a thesis that was trying to make the point that Travers was always looking for her own identity in father figures. True or not, the first third spent far too much time telling you who her idols were without ever making them interesting. It's not until Travers writes the first Mary Poppins books that she begins to make more interesting decisions in her life, travel more, and leave more letters. All made the last 2 thirds richly satisfying.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this biography of a most intriguing author. Lawson has done a fine job of a difficult subject because Travers tried to obscure the facts about her life. The stoush with Walt Disney film of Mary Poppins is most illuminating! To see my review please visit
http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201...

[Kas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the author a little opinionated at times. I think this detracted from her story,since it didn't allow me to form my own opinion. Otherwise, it was intriguing to read about the woman behind the books.

[Hancock · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author rambles a bit but it was otherwise good to read.

[Laurel Bradshaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meticulously researched and detailed. I found P.L. Travers (Helen Lyndon Goff) to be a fascinating, though difficult and self-absorbed woman. Her interest in mythology, Zen Buddhism, and theosophy sheds much light on the character of Mary Poppins, but her constant lifelong search for "Mr. Banks" - her own spiritual mentor/guru - reveals her as sad and unfulfilled. She made Mary Poppins the embodiment of the maiden, mother, crone archetype - and lived her own life with the same enigmatic characteristics. "Never explain anything" was her motto. She always insisted that Mr. Banks was the spiritual and intellectual partner of Mary Poppins, not Bert the sidewalk artist and jack of all trades. Disney was admonished not to make Bert a romantic interest, though clearly his Bert loved her. Disney did make him her magical equal, which P.L. Travers was very unhappy about. While I love the Disney movie and have been a life-long fan of Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke because of it, and while I enjoyed the Mary Poppins books as a child, I remember them only vaguely, and I will be rereading them as an adult with a different mind.

Book description: 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 96 years.

[Mike Shoop · Rating 2 out of 5]

As this book was used as source material for the film "Saving Mr. Banks," I was curious enough to read it. But in the end, the only part of it that was truly interesting to me was the Disney section. Travers' life was definitely different, but mostly comes off as rather sad and pathetic. Born Helen Lyndon Goff (and called Lyndon) in Australia, her father died when she was 7 1/2, her mother experienced several breakdowns, the three daughters were often sent to live with relatives. Lyndon often stayed with Aunt Ellie (who was actually her mother's aunt), who became the model for Mary Poppins. Over time, as she grew to adulthood, she went to Britain, morphed into Pamela, had an acting career, then began writing articles, signing herself P.L. Travers. She never considered herself an Australian or a children's author (disdained both in fact), wanted to be a poet, was often rude, snobbish, obsessive, intractable, bitter, angry, and was constantly searching for the next Mr. Banks (her father). She adopted a son (the grandson of one of her literary friends), whom she was often separated from by her own choice, seemed nearly estranged from her sisters, was involved in several uneasy relationships with other women. She comes across as mostly a cold, unfeeling, harsh sort of person, not very sympathetic or likable, and yet, she was smart, humorous, generous, cared about her work (especially Poppins), and interested in all sorts of things. A very complicated personality, to say the least. After reading this, I will say that Emma Thompson portrayed her accurately in "Saving Mr. Banks."

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

The life of the woman who brought us Mary Poppins. And wow, what a diverse life! Poet, critic, journalist, actress, children's author... and a vixen, too! My eyes can't unread what they read!!

If you're looking for a history of the Mary Poppins books, only about half of this book is for you. The rest is backstory of her life (which is fine), what happened in her personal and professional life besides Mary Poppins (which is fine), and a whole lot of details about the men, mentors, and gurus she followed (which I felt could have been edited down quite a bit).

I don't know if I feel sorry for Travers because her life was unfulfilled and she constantly had physical problems, or if I feel she did it to herself because she kind of seems like a know-it-all b**** who pushed people away and demanded one thing but then demanded the opposite, or demanded one thing but then whined that she didn't get the opposite. I'm very conflicted. And what's with telling the press and women's colleges that she doesn't like giving lectures at women's colleges because women don't ask good questions, and so men NEED to be at these presentations because only men ask good questions?!? WTF?? I definitely lean toward the opinion that she's a contradictory b**** who wouldn't budge and was rude and hurt people along the way.

Here's one passage I appreciated: "Who is Mary Poppins? In our mind's eye we see Julie Andrews in a pastel Edwardian dress, smiling as cheerily as the star of a toothpaste commercial, as saccharine as the spoonful of sugar that helped the medicine go down, as jolly as a jolly holiday with Bert, as cheery as 'Chim Chim, Cheree.' Such is the power of Walt Disney. The original Mary Poppins was not cheery at all. She was tart and sharp, rude, plain and vain." Truth!

Some other passages I liked, and mantras of Travers' life that spoke to me:
- Mary Poppins "is a controlling force, making order from disorder, making magic, then never admitting magic took place" (149) and "At the end of the adventures [in the first three Poppins books], which involve another dimension, someone leaves a sign or souvenir of the visit with Mary or the children. If the children point this out to Mary, she angrily denies anything has happened" (153).
- the theme of stars throughout the Poppins books (152, 343), which relates back to Travers' father's fascination with the stars
- unity/oneness vs. duality (152-153, and other sections before and after 152-153)
- the way the first two Poppins books mirror each other, "even to chapter titles -- 'Bad Tuesday' and 'Bad Wednesday,' 'Miss Lark's Andrew' and 'Miss Andrew's Lark,' 'The Day Out' and 'The Evening Out'" (153)
- the idea (p. 153, later in Travers' Sleeping Beauty theses, and from one of her mentors [I can't find the page now]) that children "know the language of the universe but only for a year or so, until they become fully human" (Lawson's explanation of the theory)

[Doug Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s been a couple of months since I last wrote a book review. Since the stack of books needing a review just keeps growing, perhaps it’s time to make a start. On December 22, Elaine Gibbs and I saw Saving Mr. Banks. It was a wonderful film, and yes, I know it was a PR piece for the Disney brand, and yes, I know it wanted us to feel good for the holidays. But guess what? I don’t care. I loved the movie and thought Emma Thompson was wonderful as P. L. Travers. I’m just sorry she didn’t receive an Oscar nomination for her performance. That night, after getting home, I recalled that I thought I’d bought a biography of P. L. Travers several years ago. I know that this comes as a major piece of shocking news, but I have a few books, and I even have a truckload I haven’t read. I always buy the books with the good intention of reading them, but when I buy anywhere from 3-10 books at a time, I do well to read 2 or 3 of them before I’m buying the next bunch. When I first buy a book, it’s like a shiny, glittering jewel and I begin with the ones that shine the brightest near my bed. But as time goes by, if I haven’t started them, a new book becomes the favorite and the previous one drifts off to a shelf in another room to die a slow, agonizing death by my own forgetfulness of how brightly it once shone. Periodically, I roam these shelves and pull a forgotten gem from its hiding place, shine it up and read it through its remembered glow. For me and books, the road to biblio-obscurity is paved with good intentions. Too many books have fallen by the wayside, but still drift around dustily, trying to capture my fleeting attention. Books are my obsession and there’s nothing that acts like a pick-me-up better than buying a few books. Anyway, I bought this when it was published in the United States in 2006. I’m glad the movie managed to convince me to bring it back to life from where I had exiled it (somewhere on my biography shelves amongst biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs of Mark Twain, Harry Truman, Hunter S. Thompson, Spencer Tracy and Pete Townsend among others (“Titanic” Thompson, anyone?).

So…Mary Poppins, She Wrote: A Life of P. L. Travers is by the Australian writer, Valerie Lawson. It was originally published in 1999 under the title Out of the Sky She Came. The book is divided into three sections, The Nymph, 1899-1934; The Mother, 1934-1965; and The Crone, 1965-1996. In each section, Lawson tries to offer a clear picture of who Travers was and how she interacted with her times. For people who’ve seen Saving Mr. Banks, the earliest parts of her life were relatively accurately portrayed. Travers grew up in a small community in Australia with an alcoholic father. Her ancestors were fairly well off and P. L. was often shipped off to stay for periods of time with her relatives, especially her great aunt Ellie, who served as a primary inspiration for Mary Poppins. After young Lyndon Goff (the eventual P. L. Travers) became a young adult, she grew interested in acting and joined a traveling company for a year or so. It was here she found her first close male companion. For P. L. Travers, throughout her life, she fixated on older men who she saw as mentors.

Travers’ mentors ranged the gamut from actors to directors to writers to philosophers and served as immeasurable influences. When she finally came to England in the 1920s, her next mentor was the writer, poet and publisher AE (George William Russell). She remained extremely close to him until his death 1935. Other mentors included the philosophers Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti.

Travers had several close friendships with women, but they seemed to all end badly. Lawson hints at the possibility that these were more than friendships due to the intensity of feelings conveyed in what few letters and correspondence remain. However, there is no smoking gun to confirm or deny Lawson’s speculations.

Unfortunately, Travers, although an avid correspondent, was very circumspect regarding her private life. Lawson has done an amazing amount of research, but we still have no real sense of who Travers was. Much of what Lawson relates is Travers’s fascination with people like Gurjieff and his philosophy. For me, these travels down the metaphysical road are the least interesting parts of Travers’s life. Unfortunately, they seem to be the best known.

To no surprise, the part I was most fascinated with is her relationship with Disney and the movie based on Mary Poppins. This was when the book came alive. Of course, had I read this chapter without having seen the movie, I don’t know if it would have been as meaningful.

My overall impression of Travers was that she often presented herself as a know-it-all, was prickly, sensitive, and easy to take offense. This appears to be due to some deep-seated insecurity of hers, and how people valued her for the Mary Poppins’s books (putatively children’s books) and not for any of her “more serious” poetry and writings. I think this caused her to be dissatisfied and unhappy about her legacy. She was twice a writer-in-residence at Eastern colleges (Radcliffe and Smith). But these were not particularly successful ventures. She remained aloof expecting students to come by her rooms and engage her which few did. And those that did, she was often abrupt or critical of. Towards the end of her long life she became very reclusive, both because of health and personality.

I think Lawson does the best she can with the material at hand, but in the end, the picture of P. L. Travers is not a happy one. She seems to have isolated herself and covered her tracks fairly well. The story that’s available cannot be all there is since she had wonderful relationships in her earlier years. I found the book interesting to a point, but not a particularly enjoyable read, due in no part to Lawson’s writing. For someone who created such a memorable character perhaps the expectations that she herself would be memorable is too much to ask. Perhaps we should just let her be herself.

[Amy Wren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I’ve never read any of P.L. Travers books, I read this biography as research for a video I’m working on involving the 2013 Disney film Saving Mr. Banks. It’s a fairly thorough retelling of her life that gives you a decent idea of who Travers was. Or, at least as much as she left to be found, as she was notoriously private. The author keeps it to what she wrote, and said, and did, and avoids any speculation, particularly about certain aspects of Travers life she kept a very tight lid on, including perhaps herself. Of course, this does leave the book as feeling kind of surface level.

[Nadia Zeemeeuw · Rating 3 out of 5]

This biography of P. L. Travers is certainly well researched but hardly can be called a fascinating read. There is too much details about some Travers’s friends or gurus which seem not that necessary or important enough but take way too much space and time.
I am annoyingly confused after finishing this book and can’t make-up my mind how I actually feel about it. P. L. Travers is left shadowy figure here and to be honest not that admirable as I wished she would.

[LaRae☕️ · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading this, I have a desire to revisit Mary Poppins. The book felt sad, to me. Travers searched her whole life for something she never found.

[Rebecca Goleniewski · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book felt bloated. Not every person Travers can in contact with needed a fleshed out background. I kept getting lost as to who each person was. The second half was a lot better than the first, but still suffered from bloat.

[Ramona · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting gal, although not very likable. A condensed version might have been better. As it was, I began to get the feeling it would never end... The movie “Saving Mr. Banks” might be a piece of fluff in comparison to the complete story of P.L. Travers, but I certainly enjoyed the movie more.