PL traverses

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PL Travers (ca.1924)

Pamela Lynwood Travers OBE (also Pamela Lyndon Travers; born August 9, 1899 in Maryborough , Queensland , Australia , †  April 23, 1996 in London ; actually Helen Lynwood Goff ) was an Australian-British writer . She achieved worldwide fame through her children's books about the magical nanny Mary Poppins and her successful film adaptation.

Life

PL Travers was born Helen Lyndon Goff in Australia; in the literature, both August 9, 1899 and March 14, 1906 are given as dates of birth. Her father, Travers Goff, was an office worker from London who had emigrated to Australia and married a daughter from a wealthy family there.

Helen Goff was the eldest of three daughters and grew up in affluent surroundings until she was seven years old. Then her father died, leaving the family in poverty. At seventeen she left her family to work as an actress after taking lessons from actor Lawrence Campbell . In 1923 she moved to England, London, where her first residence was in Camden - Bloomsbury . Shortly afterwards she published her first works under her father's first name and worked as a dancer, poet and Shakespeare actress. She had a particular affinity for Irish culture and the poet William Butler Yeats , also because her father had falsely told her that he was of Irish origin. She later said that she had arrived in England with only ten pounds, but that she actually lived in an expensive apartment financed by wealthy relatives with her friend Madge Burnand, with whom she is said to have had a love affair. At that time she also bought a cottage in Sussex . In 1940, PL Travers adopted a six month old baby named Camillus. She took the boy to Sussex and eventually the United States . During this time Travers worked for the British Ministry of Information . She processed the experiences she made in the novel I Go By The Sea, I Go By Land (1941). It is about British children who are sent to the USA because of the air raids on London . After her return from the USA, Travers became a supporter of the esotericist and sect leader of the Fourth Way Georges I. Gurdjieff , whom her son had to call "father". In 1977 PL Travers was accepted for her literary work in the British Order of the British Empire with the rank of OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire). At the age of almost 80, she moved to the Chelsea neighborhood of London , where she lived the rest of her life. She died of an epileptic fit at the age of 97 . Her ashes were scattered near St. Mary's Church, Hendon and there in the field of St. Mary's Churchyard, Hendon in the London Borough of Barnet . According to her will , she decreed that the location should be kept secret.

progeny

It was not until the age of seventeen that Camillus Travers (* 1939, his maiden name was John Camillus Hone) found out that he had been adopted and had a twin brother. The children came from a poor Irish family named Hone. Camillus and his twin brother, Antony Marlow Hone, and the other siblings still lived with their grandparents at the time. There were a total of seven children (five sons and two daughters, including the older brother Joseph Hone (1937-2016), later an author of spy novels ). The grandfather asked Travers to take both twins in, but her astrologer recommended that they only take one of the twins . In 1956, his 17-year-old twin brother stood in front of Camillus Travers's door. P. L. Travers tried to cut off contact with Brother Antony. He should forget about the incident and never have contact with the brother again. There was a falling out between the son and the mother. He had no contact with her for several years. At the age of almost 60, he told an acquaintance about the separation from his twin brother that he felt he was missing a part of himself. Although both men grew up in completely different circumstances - one wealthy, the other poor - both became alcoholics . Antony died lonely in 2005 and was buried in the presence of his drunken brother, who also paid for the funeral. Camillus was married to the English art director Frances Connell, with whom he had three children together: two daughters, including the book author (recipe books for ice cream ) and ice cream maker Kitty Travers , and a son. He died in November 2011 at the age of 72. Fearing that he would drink away his inheritance, Father L. Travers bequeathed her money to him as trust , which would later benefit the grandchildren.

Works

PL Travers' best known work is the stories about the magical nanny Mary Poppins . The first volume appeared in 1934 and was immediately successful. Travers wrote the manuscript in a cottage in Sussex , where she stayed with her friend Burnand for a while. Further volumes appeared in 1935 and 1943. After that, according to the author's wishes, it should be over. However, she let herself be softened by the requests of the readers and wrote another five books about the magical nanny.

bibliography

  • Mary Poppins (Mary Poppins, 1934) , Dressler Verlag, ISBN 3-7915-3577-3 or 3-7915-3505-6
  • Mary Poppins Comes Back (Mary Poppins Comes Back, 1935) , Dressler Verlag, ISBN 3-7915-3578-1 or 3-7915-3511-0
  • Mary Poppins Opens the Door (Mary Poppins Opens the Door, 1943) , Dressler Verlag, ISBN 3-7915-3516-1
  • Mary Poppins in the Park (Mary Poppins in the Park, 1952) , Dressler Verlag, ISBN 3-7915-3523-4
  • Mary Poppins from AZ (Mary Poppins from A to Z, 1962) , Cecilie Dressler Verlag 1964
  • Mary Poppins in the Kitchen , 1975
  • Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane , 1982
  • Mary Poppins and the House Next Door , 1988
  • I Go By The Sea, I Go By Land , 1941
  • The Fox At the Manger , 1963
  • In Search of the Hero: The Continuing Relevance of Myth and Fairy Tales , 1970
  • Friend Monkey , 1971
  • About The Sleeping Beauty , 1975
  • Two Pairs of Shoes , 1980
  • What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol and Story , 1989

Film adaptations

By Mary Poppins film from Walt Disney had collaborated in 1964 on whose screenplay concept Travers, she did not agree in large parts. She found the music of the Sherman brothers unsuitable, the nanny not strict enough and the implementation altogether too sweet. But what she disliked most was the animations. After the premiere, she personally asked Walt Disney to completely remove the animations before the film was released, a request that Disney promptly refused. That's why she refused to sell the film rights to any of the other volumes, even though Disney asked for it. In the 1980s, PL Travers worked with writer Brian Sibley on a second Mary Poppins film. During this collaboration, she saw the original film from 1964 for the first time since its premiere. Finally, the plans for a sequel failed while the search for suitable actors.

The 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks features Travers' collaboration with Disney on the Mary Poppins film. Emma Thompson plays Travers, and Walt Disney is played by Tom Hanks .

In 2018, the Disney film Mary Poppins' Returns , directed by Rob Marshall and starring Emily Blunt in the role of Mary Poppins, was released in cinemas.

literature

  • Valerie Lawson: Mary Poppins, she wrote: the life of PL Travers. Simon & Schuster, New York 2006. (Original title: Out of the sky she came: the life of PL Travers, creator of Mary Poppins. Hodder, Sydney 1999.), ISBN 978-0-7432-9816-2

Web links

Commons : PL Travers  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f g David Jones: How the sexual adventuress who created Mary Poppins wrecked the lives of two innocent boys: Exploits of PL Travers that you won't see in new film Saving Mr Banks. Mail Online, October 25, 2013, accessed November 27, 2013 .
  2. Find A Grave Grab (Ashes) PL Travers dated June 26, 2008, accessed August 11, 2020.
  3. Find a Grave : Camillus Travers entry from March 11, 2019, accessed on August 13, 2020.
  4. ^ Evening Standard : Ice cream van lady scoops a place among the world's superstar chefs. News from October 13, 2009, accessed on August 13, 2020.
  5. Saving Mr. Banks Left Out an Awful Lot About PL Travers www.vulture.com (in English)
  6. Authors who hated their book adaptations www.t-online.de
  7. Vincent Dowd: Mary Poppins: Brian Sibley's sequel that never was . In: BBC News . BBC. October 20, 2013. Accessed April 27, 2014. (in English)