Travers's first published book, Moscow Excursion (1934), utilized her travel-writing experience, but the book that would make her famous followed close on its heel. Through Russell, she also became friends with poet William Butler Yeats, and further explored her mythological interests studying with mystic G.I.

Travers had a love of Irish mythology, perhaps stemming from her father's stories when she was a child, so the friendship had a special significance. Its editor, George William Russell, pseudonymously known as AE, became a lifelong supporter of Travers. Once in England, she began publishing articles in various papers, including poems that she had submitted to The Irish Statesman. Having begun her journalism career in Australia, Travers was able to parlay her voyage into travel stories for homeland papers. Her wealthy relatives, however, did not approve feeling that Australians lacked humor and lyricism, she left for London, England, to seek the literary life. Her precocious reading led her to undertake The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and her writing talents emerged during her teens, when she began publishing poems in Australian periodicals.Īdopting the stage name Pamela (popular at the time) Lyndon Travers, she gained a modest reputation as a dancer and Shakespearean actress. Travers had a rich fantasy life and loved fairy tales and animals, often calling herself a hen. She lived there for 10 years, although boarded at Sydney's Normanhurst Girls School during World War I.

Her father, Travers Goff, was an unsuccessful bank manager and heavy drinker who died when she was 7.Ĭalled Lyndon as a child, Travers moved with her mother and sisters to New South Wales after her father's death, where they were supported by a great aunt (the inspiration for her book Aunt Sass).

Her mother, Margaret Agnes Morehead, was the sister of the Premier of Queensland. Travers was born Helen Lyndon Goff on August 9, 1899, in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia. The Disney film Mary Poppins made the notoriously private and prickly Travers immensely wealthy, but also unhappy. The Mary Poppins tales sprang from Travers entertaining young visitors, combined with a love of mythology. Travers' rich fantasy life propelled her to write stories and poems at an early age, and after a brief stint in the theater, she moved to London, England, to pursue a literary life, hobnobbing with Irish poets such as William Butler Yeats.

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