Pamela Travers

Australian writer, a poet, journalist, essayist, film and theater critic. A scholar of folklore and myth, she has performed as a dancer and a Shakespearean actress. Travers is renowned for her "Mary Poppins," published in 1934 and selling millions of copies, translated into more than 20 languages. Prolific, her precise, lyrical prose was still being published while she was in her 80's.

The eldest of three daughters of a Irish sugar planter and a Scottish mother, she had curly dark gold hair and deep blue eyes. Her parents infused the household with the literary traditions of the British Isles and the child Helen loved reading and writing stories.

Taciturn about her personal life, she gave different versions to interviewers. When she was seven, her dad died and the family moved to New South Wales. By the time she was ten, Travers was an actress in a stage production, and as a teen, toured Australia with a Shakespeare company. In 1924, she moved to England with five pounds in her pocket. While working as a journalist and critic, she began studying Celtic folklore and Eastern mysticism.

After the outbreak of WW II, Travers spent 1940 to 1945 in the U.S. She later returned as a writer in residence at Radcliffe College in 1965 at Smith College the following year. From 1976 on she was a consulting editor of the New York-based journal Parabola, which is devoted to the scholarly exploration of myth and tradition. During the years she continued to write, putting out "I Go by Sea, I go by Land," "Friend Monkey," and "What the Bee Knows."

Though she never married, Travers adopted a son, Camillus, who later gave her three grandkids. As she aged and her health began to decline, she became more reclusive in her London townhouse. She died at 96 in London, on 23 April 1996.