Hello! My name is Lina Slavova, and I am deeply fascinated by Mary Poppins and the creative genius of her author, P.L. Travers. I have always been an avid reader, and a few years ago, after finishing Travers’s biography, I found myself wanting more—more understanding, more depth, more nuance. So, I set out to search for it.
At the end of 2016, a year into the project, I launched a blog to accompany my research into P.L. Travers’s life, spiritual beliefs, and literary works—and I have been writing ever since.
This writing project has enriched my life in countless ways, and I believe that both P.L. Travers and Mary Poppins hold the power to do the same for you. They can inspire you to expand your awareness and, most importantly, to reconnect with your inner child. We all need a touch of magic in our busy lives—and it may be closer than we think, for everything we need is already within us.
So, welcome to The Mary Poppins Effect—a blog dedicated to P.L. Travers, the mysterious and, I dare say, largely misunderstood author of Mary Poppins. Although Travers is best known for her Mary Poppins books, she also wrote other works, including poetry, short stories, and essays, many of them exploring the rich world of myths and fairy tales.
Her whimsical imagination and her courage to live life on her own terms—at a time when most women had neither voice nor choice—are worthy of acknowledgement. Complex personalities like P.L. Travers resist our attempts to fit them neatly into a category; it is far easier to dismiss them as eccentrics. Yet such categorisation is neither accurate nor fair.
She once admitted in an interview that Mary Poppins was—and is—the story of her life. Later, when asked about the possibility that people might one day analyse Mary Poppins as they do Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, she offered a mischievous reply: “I’m sure they will and I’m taking every possible opportunity to erase all her tracks and mine.”
Well, that did not stop people from poking around. For me, the fact that so much is hidden within Mary Poppins only awakened my inner Sherlock Holmes. Thanks to the work of those before me who tried to uncover, piece by piece, the mystery of P.L. Travers and her creation, I did not have to start from scratch. I simply picked up where they left off and followed the trail even further down the rabbit hole. The reflections you’ll find on this website are my own attempt to answer at least some of the questions that still linger.
Now, if you will, make yourself a nice cup of English tea, add a drop or two of whiskey if you like (P.L. Travers sometimes did), and join me in searching for the clues that might help us uncover the secrets of Mary Poppins and her enigmatic creator.
