Pamela Travers: biography, history, life, creativity and books

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Pamela Travers is an Australian-born English writer. Her main creative victory was a series of children's books about Mary Poppins. Pamela Travers, whose biography is presented in this article, lived an extraordinary, rich and interesting life, corresponding to the world of her books.

Childhood

The real name of the writer is Helen Goff. She was born on August 9th back in 1899. It happened in the Australian town of Maryborough. Her family was quite we althy. His father, whose name was Travers Goff, worked as a bank manager. Mother, Margaret Morehead, was the niece of the Prime Minister of Queensland. Pamela had Irish roots on her father.

In 1905, Travers' work forced the entire family to move to the nearby town of Allora, where he was demoted to a bank clerk. All the fault was the deep drinking of the head of the family. Two years later the venerable Travers expired. In official papers, the cause of death is an epileptic seizure, but much later his daughter, already a famous writer,confesses that his father died of alcoholism.

After the funeral, the family moved to New South Wales, where Helen-Pamela's grandmother lived. She had her own sugar plantation. The Goffs lived there for ten years.

As a child, Helen preferred the company of animals to human society. She had a very developed fantasy and imagination. She read many books and believed in fairy tales.

Youth

When the First World War broke out, Pamela Travers began studying at the Ashville School for Girls. It was there that her talent as a writer manifested itself most clearly for her youthful years. She delighted the school theater with plays, wrote stories and poems, her brothers and sisters were delighted with the fairy tales that came out from Pamela's pen.

It was published very early in Australian magazines. However, writing books was not the ultimate dream of a young girl. She studied music and longed to become an actress.

In 1917, Helen Goff moved to Sydney to fulfill her wish. It is there that she becomes P. L. Travers. The initials at that time were in use among women who wanted to participate in cultural and creative life.

For several years she successfully performed in the theater, playing the main roles. However, this activity did not bring tangible income, and in order to somehow exist, Pamela had to earn extra money as a journalist. For a long time she led a column in the newspaper. The literary path also brought a small income. In the meantime, her poems were gaining more and more popularity. The subject matter was quite varied. Some sangfather's homeland - Ireland, others were erotic in nature.

In the end, writing took over, and Pamela decided to devote her life to literature.

Moving to England

The turning point in the fate of the writer was 1924. It was then that she moved to England. Her journey was very interesting and was reflected in some of Pamela's works. According to Travers, she had only ten pounds when she hit the road, and five of them were spent on some nonsense.

At first she wrote small articles for Australian publishers in London and sent large articles about art to the newspapers of her homeland.

In 1925, during a trip to Ireland, Pamela Travers met the poet J. W. Russell, who became not only a friend for her, but also, in a sense, the ideologist of life. Their communication continued until 1935, until Russell's death. He was the editor of the magazine, so Pamela often published. In addition, thanks to this man, the writer met many Irish poets of the twentieth century, who had a great influence on her.

Among them, a special place was occupied by William Yeats, who instilled in her not just an interest in the occult, but faith in it. From the moment they met until her last days, Pamela Travers considered this direction to be decisive in her destiny.

Triumph of Pamela

In 1934, the writer fell ill with pleurisy and decided to leave London to gain strength outside the city on a freshair. She moved into an old house in Sussex and gave up writing for a while.

Her friend Russell assumed Pamela was working on a big witch novel (because of her occult addictions), but that wasn't the case. She did not write at all, only read a lot and looked after the garden. But one day she was asked to look after two children, and Travers agreed. To somehow entertain the kids, she came up with an amazing story about an unusual nanny who flew to the children on an umbrella.

That's how the famous Mary Poppins was born, unexpectedly appearing at number 17 on Cherry Street, the Banks family and other heroes. From an ordinary bedtime story, only Pamela Lyndon Travers could develop a plot for a book, but not one. "Mary Poppins" came out in the same 1934. It was an incredible success, a real triumph.

The next year, the continuation of the story about the nanny came out. In total, the writer created 18 works about the magical Lady Mary, the last of which was published in 1989.

Pamela Travers' books were filmed in Hollywood in 1964. Disney made the film, which ended up being nominated for 13 Oscars (winning 5). In Russia, in 1983, the film "Mary Poppins, goodbye!" was released, in which Natalya Andreichenko played the main role.

Private life

There were a lot of relationships in the life of the writer, but she never got married. She was even credited with love affairs withwomen.

For a long time, Pamela Lyndon Travers, whose books were adored by all English children, dreamed of a child, but she failed to give birth. Therefore, as soon as she was forty years old, she decided to adopt a baby. It turned out to be a boy from Dublin (Ireland). The choice was not accidental. Little John Cammilus was the grandson of Joseph Gohn, who, in turn, was a friend of William Yeats and was his biographer. Joseph and his wife were forced to raise seven grandchildren alone and agreed to give one of them up for adoption in order to somehow make life easier. Cammilus had a twin brother, but despite this, Pamela only wanted to take him alone.

After completing all the paperwork, John began to bear the name Cammilus Travers Ghosn. Pamela hid the truth from her son, but she still surfaced when he met his twin Anthony in one of the London bars. The young people were seventeen years old.

Cammylus died in 2011.

Interesting facts

1. P. L. Travers died in 1996, a couple of months before her 97th birthday.
2. The writer was an MBE.