Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers Author: Valerie Lawson | Language: English | ISBN:
B00E6QSX94 | Format: EPUB
Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P. L. Travers Description
The remarkable life of P.L. Travers, the creator of Mary Poppins.
An arresting life…Lawson is superb at excavating the details. –
Library JournalThe spellbinding stories of Mary Poppins, the quintessentially English and utterly magical nanny, have been loved by generations. She flew into the lives of the unsuspecting Banks family in a children’s book that was instantly hailed as a classic, then became a household name when Julie Andrews stepped into the title role in Walt Disney’s hugely successful and equally classic film. But the Mary Poppins in the stories was not the cheery film character. She was tart and sharp, plain and vain. She was a remarkable character.
The story of Mary Poppins’ creator, as this definitive biography reveals, is equally remarkable. The fabulous English nanny was actually conceived by an Australian, Pamela Lyndon Travers, who came to London in 1924 from Queensland as a journalist. She became involved with Theosophy, traveled in the literary circles of W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot, and became a disciple of the famed spiritual guru, Gurdjieff. She famously clashed with Walt Disney over the adaptation of the Mary Poppins books into film. Travers, whom Disney accused of vanity for “thinking you know more about Mary Poppins than I do,” was as tart and opinionated as Julie Andrews’s big-screen Mary Poppins was cheery. Yet it was a love of mysticism and magic that shaped Travers’s life as well as the character of Mary Poppins. The clipped, strict, and ultimately mysterious nanny who emerged from her pen was the creation of someone who remained inscrutable and enigmatic to the end of her ninety-six years.
Valerie Lawson’s illuminating biography provides the first full look whose personal journey is as intriguing as her beloved characters.
- File Size: 27524 KB
- Print Length: 416 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Media Tie-In edition (December 3, 2013)
- Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00E6QSX94
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,268 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Australian - #39
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Authors - #72
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Actors & Actresses
- #1
in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Ethnic & National > Australian - #39
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Authors - #72
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Actors & Actresses
After seeing the movie, Saving Mr.Banks, I wanted to know more about P.L.Travers. Unfortunately, I learned more (boring stuff) about the the literary and philosophical circles P.L.Travers traveled in than I did about the woman herself.
As a fan of the Mary Poppins books, having borrowed them from the library many times as a child, I already knew that the Walt Disney movie starring Julie Andrews (!) was its own fantasy, rather than a cinematic portrayal of the Mary Poppins I knew from P.L.Travers' books. After reading 'Mary Poppins, She Wrote' I believe that the movie 'Saving Mr.Banks' is ANOTHER Disney fantasy, rather than an accurate or realistic biography of P.L.Travers OR the making of the their Mary Poppins movie.
I understand that P.L.Travers obscured, hid facts, and down right lied about her life over the years, so I'm sure that writing her biography was difficult. But Valerie Lawson tells us, up front, that despite Travers' claims that she did not want anyone to write her biography, Travers left a wealth of papers and documentation, and made sure it was available to anyone who wanted to read it. If there IS so much open documentation, one would think she could have presented a more straight forward, if not more informative, biography.
I was really bored by the tedious FILLER about all the gurus P.L.Travers followed in her life. It might have been SLIGHTLY more acceptable if Lawson had included anything that explained WHAT these teachings were about. Despite having to plow through page after page about Gurdijieff, I couldn't grasp any basic concept of his teachings as related by Valerie Lawson in her book...even though Wikipedia manages to fit it into a lot less space and comes up with a more concise explanation.
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