Painless productions p&l travers biography

British author P. Travers — , although the author of many writings for children and adults, was best known for her book Mary Poppins and its sequels. This fantasy, about a nanny with magical powers, became one of the great publishing successes of the twentieth century, enjoying new bursts of popularity after the book's adaptation to film in and to a stage musical in the early s.

She later took the surname Travers from the first name of her father, Travers Goff, a bank employee and an alcohol abuser who fell on hard times during her childhood; Pamela, a fashionable name in the years after World War I, was her own invention. As a writer she used only her first and middle initials, a common device in British letters especially among women who wanted their work to be appreciated on its own merits.

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Her father was of Irish descent and sometimes waxed maudlin about his ancestral home; her mother was fond of raising her daughter with the aid of maxims and sayings, some of which found their way verbatim into the Mary Poppins books. Often as a child, Travers imagined herself as a bird, specifically as a hen. She loved animals and had a rich fantasy life, often arranging corners of her family's backyard into miniature parks.

She also loved to read fairy tales. Travers's father died when she was seven. The family moved to the resort town of Bowral in New South Wales, where her great-aunt the model for the title character in Travers's book Aunt Sass owned a sugar plantation. Travers attended Normanhurst Private Girls School but was bored with her classes and demanded to be allowed to read on her own, whereupon she began the weighty history The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Even as a teenager, Travers was writing poems that appeared in Australian peri- odicals. The editor who published her first poem was the father of future media magnate Rupert Murdoch. She also took a music class, which led her into theater. When she was 17, she headed for Sydney, Australia, and embarked on an acting career.