P. L. Travers

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-10-06

P. L. Travers (1899-1996), born Helen Lyndon Goff in Maryborough, Queensland, was an Australian-born British writer, the creator of Mary Poppins. Her Irish father, a bank manager, died when she was seven, and after a childhood in Queensland and New South Wales she worked as an actress and journalist before moving to England in 1924, where she wrote for the Irish Statesman and was taken up by the poet George Russell (AE) and befriended by W. B. Yeats. Mary Poppins (1934), written while she was recovering from illness in Sussex, was an immediate success, and seven more books about the nanny of Cherry Tree Lane followed over fifty-four years, the last, Mary Poppins and the House Next Door, in 1988, all illustrated by Mary Shepard. Her long and unhappy dealings with Walt Disney over the 1964 film are the subject of the film Saving Mr. Banks. A student of mythology and of Gurdjieff, she wrote on folklore for the journal Parabola, and was appointed OBE in 1977.

Universe(s)

Books

• Mary Poppins (1934) · Mary Poppins Core Canon
• Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935) · Mary Poppins Core Canon
• Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943) · Mary Poppins Core Canon
• Mary Poppins in the Park (1952) · Mary Poppins Core Canon
• Mary Poppins from A to Z (1962) · Mary Poppins Expanded Canon
• Mary Poppins in the Kitchen (1975) · Mary Poppins Expanded Canon
• Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane (1982) · Mary Poppins Core Canon
• Mary Poppins and the House Next Door (1988) · Mary Poppins Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 6 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

← All authors