Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers

I really enjoyed this book and was a great follow up to the movie Saving Mr. Banks. Very easy to read and lots of additional interesting facts. I read the first book in the Mary Poppins series as well. I really enjoyed it all as well as the Walt Disney Mary Poppins movie.

Valerie Lawson has done something P. L. Travers claimed she didn't want anyone to do: write her biography. It's a very good book. Travers discouraged personal questions in interviews, and preferred to discuss her work and, in later years, her philosophy of life -- the essence of experience as opposed to the mundane details of living. Lawson makes the case that if Travers had been serious about this she would have destroyed her papers -- which she decidedly did not do. Whatever her true feelings on the matter, this is a fascinating book, filled with insights into Travers' life and work, and with a respectable amount of attention to the work itself, especially the meanings and importance of the Mary Poppins books. I think Lawson gives somewhat short shrift to Travers work with Parabola magazine, which is some of her most brilliant writing -- inspiring to thousands of her readers, and collected in the now out of print "What the Bee Knows." (Note to publishers: bring it back!) You may also find out more than you want to known about her endless toing and froing with Disney, and the ways in which the movie deal echoed through the last thirty years of her life. But Lawson also gives the first comprehensive account of Travers' private life, her involvement AE and Gurdieff, her adoption of one twin, her son Camillus, and her early career as an actress. Her love affairs are touched on. I'm not sure, in the end, if all the private matters, interesting as they may be, really add to our understanding of Travers' work, though Lawson makes some persuasive connections between the fantasy and the reality. Mary Poppins herself, the Great Exception, survives the biography with her mystery intact, and in spite of Lawson's sympathetic and thorough craftsmanship, so does Travers. For those of us lucky ones who count Travers as a touchstone in our lives, that's just fine. Questions without answers can often be more satisfying than the other kind.

OF course it was the recent movie that inspired me to learn about P.L. Travers. She was interesting, very bright, and eccentric. Unfortunately, the book is a bit tedious. Most of her friends, intellectual and otherwise, were people I'd never heard of even though in their day they might have been well-known. I got tired reading about her spiritual quests that lasted throughout her life. A great biographer writes a great story that draws you in. Valerie Lawson does not fall into the great category. I do remain grateful to P.L. Travers for dreaming up Mary Poppins and all the wonderful stories around her.

This biography is well-researched. For someone who didn't want her life to be written about after her death, P. L. Travers certainly left extensive notes in a public library and the author not only used those notes, but was able to briefly contact Travers shortly before her death, though as fate would have it, their meeting never took place. From this rich source of material, author Valerie Lawson wrote a detailed and fascinating biography of the creator of "Mary Poppins." Despite having read all the Poppins books as a child, I knew nothing about P. L. Travers. She changed her name, she was Australian, though she comes across as British as a cup of strong tea, she had been an actress on the stage and she followed mystic Gurdjieff, among other odd facts. The book is detailed, especially about Travers' parents. This is slow going at first, but provides valuable background into her childhood, not a happy childhood but one that created vast sources to draw from to create the world of Mary Poppins. It was fascinating to learn who was the real life Mrs. Corry and her gigantic daughters who ran a candy shop. Was her domineering and inflexible great-aunt the source of the more rigid and snappish side of Mary Poppins? I couldn't put this book down. You have to like biographies, with lots of detail, because Lawson is a journalist and really goes into journalistic detail. This book was actually originally published in Australia in 1999, but due to the recent film "The Real Mr. Banks", it has gotten attention. I couldn't put it down--I love biographies, especially of authors and I was amazed at what I didn't know about the life of P. L. Travers. Highly recommended, with the caution that you have to like a lot of factual stuff because this is a biography and not a novel.

Supreme! I have greatly enjoyed reading this book. Did P.L.Travers know that in 1983 there was a musical film "Good buy, Mary Poppins" made in Russia, which became very popular there? It featured many great songs but none of them similar to Walt Disney production. In 1968 there was a radio musical production of Mary Poppins in Russia, and the books were translated into Russian by famous Russian poet Boris Zakhoder before that radio show.

For anyone who loves Mary Poppins, in any or all of her incarnations, this book serves as a great introduction to the evolution of the character. The biography paints a great portrait of the woman best known as the creator of Mary Poppins, while being quite blunt about her shortcomings, personality quirks, and key moments and people in her life which are all reflected somewhere in the text of the Mary Poppins books. Knowing what makes this author tick makes reading the Poppins books themselves a more meaningful experience as the reader can harken back to anecdotes and philosophies that Travers liberally sprinkled throughout the world of Cherry Tree Lane. My favorite part of the book is the no-holds-barred retelling of Travers' negotiations with Walt Disney for the move rights, and subsequent alienation she encountered while becoming a thorn in the side to the production, so much so that she wasn't invited to the Hollywood premiere and almost literally crashed the event. This reaffirms everything I know from listening to the commentary of the film, as well as the Sherman Brothers remembrances of Travers' less than helpful suggestions for the movie. If you love to hear about the behind-the-scenes goings on on film sets as much as I do, the chapter on the Disney movie will be a favorite.

This book is informative about the life of P L Travers (Helen Lyndon Goff). She wrote the Mary Poppins books. At first glance you may think she had a hard life and that why she was the way she was. After I finished the book, I thought so what. Many people grow up with an alcoholic parent or two and are not like that. So I did not feel sorry for her. She made a lot of money off of the Mary Poppins movie and that is what she needed but she was not a nice person. She was selfish and self centered. But the book was good.

I came to this biography not having previously read any of the Mary Poppins stories. Lawson divides her biography of Travers into three parts: Nymph, Mother and Crone. This mirrors Travers' own perception of her life. Unfortunately, Lawson wastes a lot of words in Nymph describing the various people who seem to have influenced Travers. Travers, herself, comes across as a piece of stage scenery; I learned virtually nothing about her. I didn't begin to gain an understanding of Travers until the second part: Mother. I don't believe that Lawson disliked her subject; rather, she seems to have tried to chronicle Travers life with an even hand. If anything, it seems to me that despite Travers assertion that she wished to remain anonymous, she left ample clues as to her true character in her copious writings -- public and private. If anything, what comes through clearly is that Travers was a needy and self-centered person who never came to terms with her inner devils. I gave this book three stars because I found that Lawson's recounting of Travers life to be similar to reading a history book that consists only of a list of dates and events. This may not be Lawson's fault; she may have been limited by the source material that she used to build this biography. Nevertheless, I must say that I finished reading this book with relief.