P.L. Travers

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Pamela Lyndon Travers was born Helen Lyndon Goff, on August 9, 1899 in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia.
Her family was largely Irish in background.
She died in London on April 23, 1996 at age 96.

Novels

• Mary Poppins (1934)
• Mary Poppins Comes Back (1935)
• Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1944)
• Mary Poppins In the Park (1952)
• Mary Poppins From A to Z (alphabet book) (1962)
• Mary Poppins In Cherry Tree Lane (1982)
• Mary Poppins and the House Next Door (1988)
• Mary Poppins In the Kitchen: A Cookery book with a Story (1991)
  
  
• Happy Ever After (1940)
• I go by Sea, I go by Land (1941)
• The Fox at the Manger (1962)
• Friend Monkey (1971)

Compilations and Essays

• What the Bee Knows: Myth, Symbol, and Story (1989)
• About the Sleeping Beauty William Collins Sons and Co., 1975.
• About the Sleeping Beauty (1975)
• Two Pairs of Shoes (1980)
• George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1970) (discusses Gurdjieff's works).
• The Divine Child and the Hero: Inner Meaning in Children's Literature, by Claudio Naranjo, preface by P.L. Travers

Essays and Stories

• "The World of the Hero", Parabola vol. 1, nr. 1, 1976
• "The Once and Future Treasure", Parabola vol. 1, nr. 3, 1976, review of Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment
• "Fear No More the Heat of the Sun", Parabola vol. 2, nr. 1, 1977
• "The Legacy of the Ancestors", Parabola vol.2, nr. 2, 1977
• "If She's Not Gone, She Lives There Still", Parabola vol. 3, nr. 1, 1978
• "Letter to a Learned Astrologer", Parabola vol. 3, nr. 4, 1978
• "The Youngest Brother", Parabola vol. 4, nr. 1, 1979
• "The Primary World", Parabola vol. 4, nr. 3, 1979
• "Four Women", Parabola vol.5, nr. 4, 1980
• "What the Bees Know", Parabola vol. 6, nr. 1, 1981
• "The Seventh Day", Parabola vol. 7, nr. 1, 1982
• "Where Will All the Stories Go?", Parabola vol. 7, nr. 2, 1982
• "Speak, Lord", Parabola vol. 7, nr. 2, 1982
• "Name and No Name", Parabola vol. 7, nr. 3, 1982
• "Leda's Lament", Parabola vol. 7, nr. 4, 1982
• "Walking the Maze at Chartres", Parabola vol. 8, nr. 1, 1983
• "A Parabola Bestiary", (contributor), Parabola vol. 8, nr. 2, 1983
• "What Aileth Thee?", Parabola vol. 8, nr. 3, 1983
• "Re-storying the Adult", Parabola vol. 8, nr. 4, 1983
• "Tarot Card No. 12/The Hanged Man", Parabola vol. 9, nr. 1, 1984
• "Miss Quigley", Parabola vol. 9, nr. 2, 1984
• "The Way Back", Parabola vol. 9, nr. 3, 1984
• "Sip No Sup and Bite No Bit", Parabola vol. 9, nr.4, 1984
• "Answering Back", (contributor), Parabola vol. 10, nr. 1, 1985
• "Now, Farewell, and Hail", Parabola vol. 10, nr. 2, 1985
• "On Unknowing", Parabola vol. 10, nr.3, 1985
• "The Garment", Parabola vol. 10, nr. 4, 1985
• "The Unsleeping Eye", Parabola vol. 11, nr. 1, 1986
• "Nirvana Is Samsara", Parabola vol. 11, nr. 2, 1986
• "Out from Eden", Parabola vol. 11, nr. 3, 1986
• "Lively Oracles", Parabola vol. 11, nr. 4, 1986
• "Le Chevalier Perdu", Parabola vol. 12, nr. 1, 1987
• "On Forgiving Oneself", Parabola vol. 12, nr. 3, 1987
• "Zen Moments", Parabola vol. 12, nr. 4, 1987
• "The Interviewer", Parabola vol. 13, nr. 1, 1988
• "Well, Shoot Me!", Parabola vol. 13, nr. 2, 1988
• "Something Else", Parabola vol. 13, nr. 3, 1988
• "Monte Perdido", Parabola vol. 13, nr. 4, 1988
• "The Celestial Root", Parabola vol. 14, nr. 3, 1989
• "Green Grow the Rushes", Parabola vol. 14, nr. 4, 1989
• "Sunflower", Parabola vol. 15, nr. 2, 1990
• "Unknown Childhood", Parabola vol. 15, nr. 3, 1990
• "Stone Soup", Parabola vol. 15, nr. 4, 1990
• "Threepenny Bit", Parabola vol. 16, nr. 1, 1991
• "Remembering", Parabola vol. 16, nr. 2, 1991
• "Loki the Trickster", Parabola vol. 16, nr. 3, 1991, Norse tale retold by PLT
• "The Bird and The Word", Parabola vol. 16, nr. 4, 1991
• "Sleeping Beauty", Parabola vol. 17, nr. 2, 1992, European story retold by PLT
• "In the Beginning", Parabola vol. 17, nr. 3, 1992
• "The Thirteenth Wise Woman", Parabola vol. 20, nr. 2, 1995
• "In Search of the World Tree", Parabola vol. 24, nr. 3, 1999
• "The Black Sheep", From the Brothers Grimm Newsletter, vol. 4, nr. 2
• "Only Connect", The Openhearted Audience Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1980 (Contains talks first given at the Library of Congress and published in the Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress from 1967 to 1979.)
• "My First Book", The Author, Journal of the Society of Authors, Summer 1995
• "Grimm's Women", The New York Times Book Review, 1975
• "Two Pairs of Shoes", Sufi Journal, vol. 3
• "The Rose and the Egg", A Journal of Our Time, nr. 3, 1982
• "The Wound in the Heel", A Journal of Our Time, nr. 2, 1979

Poetry

• "A Woman's Path", in Sufi Journal, vol. 2
• "Christmas Song for a Child", in New English Weekly
• "O Children of this World!", in Parabola, vol.12, nr. 2

Articles, Books and Websites about P.L. Travers

• In Memoriam Essay, by J. Kieran Kealy
• Wally Hasting's Mary Poppins page notes from a university-level course on children's literature
• Book Review of new Mary Poppins books, by Ruth Berman. (originally appearing in Mythprint, March 1992, and reprinted in Once Upon a Time apa 34, June 1996).
• Pamela Travers: 1899-1996 appears in The Gurdjieff International Review, Spring 2000 Issue, Vol. III (2)
• Mary Poppins, Gurdjieff and Fundamentalism by Massimo Introvigne. Discusses Gurdjieff's possible influence on Mary Poppins, and a few related topics.
• The Mystic Life of P.L. Travers interview with Valerie Lawson, who wrote a biography of P.L. Travers
• Eric Shackle's eBook: Mary Poppins article on Mary Poppins/P.L. Travers tribute statue in Maryborough
• independent.co.uk: Hail, Mary! Article on Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers, and a stage version of the book.
• Article on P.L. Travers from The Bulletin
• Maryborough City Council: Mary Poppins biography of P.L. Travers
• It Happened In History! P.L. Travers summary of P.L. Travers' life
• A Lively Oracle: A Centennial Celeration of P.L. Travers (1999), ed. by Ellen Dooling Draper and Jenny Koralek
• P.L. Travers - David Higham Associates some biographical information
• P.L. Travers in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations
• Pamela L. Travers entry in Wikipedia
• P.L. Travers: A Memoir (1999), written by Richard Austin.
• Pipers at the Gates of Dawn: The Wisdom of Children's Literature, by Jonathan Cott. New York: Random House, 1983, 327 pp. (Contains articles on Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, William Steig, Astrid Lindgren, Chinua Achebe, P.L. Travers, and Iona and Peter Opie)
• Mary Poppins and Myth, by Staffan Bergsten, 1978
• P.L. Travers, by Patricia Demers; Twayne's English Author Series, No. 483 1991
• Out of the Sky She Came: the Life of P.L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins by Valerie Lawson. Hodder Headline Australia; 1999.

This page is in no way affiliated with P.L. Travers or whoever manages her estate.
I have created it out of love for the author and her works, and in response to my own frustration at a lack of readily available information about her on the web. I have endeavoured to be as complete and accurate as I could, but I am in no way an authority.