The Mary Poppins series by P. L. Travers

First published:Mary Poppins, 1934; Mary Poppins Comes Back, 1935; Mary Poppins Opens the Door, 1943; Mary Poppins in the Park, 1952; all illustrated

Type of work: Fantasy

Themes: The supernatural and nature

Time of work: The 1930’s

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Locale: London

Principal Characters:

• Mary Poppins, a prim and peremptory nursemaid, who takes the Banks children on fanciful outings
• Jane Banks, the eldest, who helps with the younger children but still enjoys imaginative play
• Michael Banks, Jane’s brother, who is inquisitive and impatient but well-meaning
• John and Barbara Banks, the younger twins
• Annabel Banks, the baby
• Mr. and Mrs. Banks, the children’s parents
• Admiral Boom, a neighbor whose house is built to look like a ship
• Miss Lark, a neighbor whose dogs, Andrew and Willoughby, are always getting into scrapes
• Bert, Mary Poppins’ friend, who works variously as a match seller and pavement artist, depending on the weather

The Story

Jane and Michael Banks live in what is an ordinary, if somewhat disordered, middle-class English household at Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane, London. Then Mary Poppins blows in on the east wind to take the post of their nanny. She delights Mr. and Mrs. Banks by restoring their home to its efficient running and emotional balance, and she enchants the children by escorting them on a series of magical adventures. In each of the first three books, Mary Poppins makes unorthodox descents from some unspecified place above—via an airborne umbrella, a kite, fireworks—stays long enough to make life around the Bankses’ nursery anything but ordinary, then departs in an equally fanciful manner. There is no magical return in the fourth book, Mary Poppins in the Park, whose stories are to be understood as having happened during one of her three stays in Cherry Tree Lane.

The structure of all four books is episodic, with the plots loosely following certain patterns. In one pattern, for example, the children visit one of Mary Poppins’ relatives, all of whom prove to be nearly as unusual as the nursemaid herself. When they have tea with her uncle, Mr. Wigg, the party takes place suspended in air near the ceiling, because host and guests have become inflated with “Laughing Gas.” In “Topsy-Turvy” her Cousin Arthur Turvy finds everything—including his teatime guests—turning upside down. Having his wishes granted causes humorous situations for Cousin Fred in “Mr. Twigley’s Wishes.”

In a similar pattern, the children meet an acquaintance of Mary Poppins in the afternoon and then awaken in the night to witness some mysterious activity. Mrs. Corry’s dark little shop disappears after Jane and Michael purchase her special gingerbread by sticking threepenny bits on a coat already glittering with countless coins. The gingerbread wrappers, decorated with gold paper stars, they put away for safekeeping. That evening, discovering that the wrappers are missing, the children look out their nursery window in time to see Mary Poppins and Mrs. Corry standing on tall ladders, pasting the evening stars in the sky. In “Nellie-Rubina,” Jane and Michael watch in amazement as Mary Poppins assists her friend, who happens to be Noah’s eldest daughter, in bringing spring to the park from her base of operations, the Ark.

In “Full Moon,” “The Evening Out,” and “High Tide,” Jane and Michael are summoned from their nursery at night to attend a celebration. The partygoers are zoo animals, heavenly bodies, and deep-sea creatures respectively, but in every case the guest of honor is Mary Poppins herself.

In some episodes the Banks children enter a work of art, or a representative of that realm steps, living, into their world. Jane has a harrowing adventure inside the picture on a Royal Doulton bowl in “Bad Wednesday,” and in “Happy Ever After” the children cavort at a New Year’s Eve party with beloved toys and favorite figures from storybooks. The premise that movement between the real and make-believe worlds is possible is common to most fantasy literature. It is P. L. Travers’ elaboration of that premise that makes these chapters memorable. For example, “The Day Out” begins with Mary Poppins and her friend Bert stepping into one of his pavement drawings. That merry-go-rounds and tables spread with raspberry teacakes may be hidden in the background of quiet landscape paintings is as thrilling to the reader as the idea that one might step into the drawing to enjoy them.

A common denominator for most of these stories is their conclusion: The children ask Mary Poppins to confirm their incredible experience, and she silences them with an icy glance or pointed remark. Her denial is part of the deflation that marks the return to ordinary reality. Often, however, some concrete evidence—the missing gingerbread wrappers in “Mrs. Corry,” for example, or a starfish brooch given to Mary Poppins in “HighTide”—proves that their adventure was not a dream but just as real, in a different way, as their lives in the nursery.

Context

Pamela Lyndon Travers was making a name for herself as a journalist and poet when Mary Poppins first arrived on the scene in 1934. Although born and reared in Australia, Travers is of Irish descent, and such luminaries as (George Russell) and William Butler Yeats acted as her literary mentors in the 1920’s and 1930’s, during which time she was a regular contributor to the Irish Statesman.

Although she insists that there is no such thing as children’s literature (there is only good and bad literature), because of the success of the Mary Poppins series it is primarily as a writer of children’s books that she continues to be known. I Go by Sea, I Go by Land (1941) is a realistic account of two English children’s World War II evacuation to the United States. Her interests in Chistianity, legend, and nature mix in The Fox at the Manger (1962), a Christmas tale about animals bringing gifts to the infant Jesus. Friend Monkey (1971) humorously tells of the disruption to a Victorian London household caused by a mischievous monkey. About the Sleeping Beauty (1975) collects versions of this traditional tale—including one by Travers herself—and comments on its lasting appeal.

For all her other work, it is as the creator of Mary Poppins that Travers is best known. Besides the four main works that constitute this series, some shorter or specialty books have subsequently appeared. In Mary Poppins from A to Z (1962) Travers recalls eccentric characters and whimsical events in the form of an alphabet book. Mary Poppins in the Kitchen (1975) is, as the subtitle indicates, “a cookery book with a story.” Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane (1982) gathers most of the characters from the earlier books for a Midsummer’s Eve celebration and thus is a fitting epilogue to the entire series. It should be noted that all the Mary Poppins books have been illustrated by Mary Shepard, who has helped to make memorable the title character’s Dutch-doll features and air of superiority. The artistry of this daughter of the renowned illustrator Ernest H. Shepard is as intrinsic to the creation of Mary Poppins as her father’s was to the conception of Rat and Mole in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908).

Critics have mentioned other works of fantasy by British writers as predecessors to the Mary Poppins series. Both Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Sir James M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1904) have children departing from the customs of upper-middle-class English life (afternoon tea and nursery fires) to make brief excursions into fantasy lands. Perhaps Travers’ books most closely resemble those of E. Nesbit, who believed more than either Carroll or Barrie in the importance of establishing a firm basis of reality from which to launch fantastic adventures. (In fact, critic John Rowe Townsend speculates that the immense popularity of the Mary Poppins series among American readers owes as much to the detailed depiction of English domestic life of an earlier period as it does to the magic.) Like Nesbit’s Phoenix and Psammead, Mary Poppins can be as bad-tempered and vain as she is magical. The Disney film version of Mary Poppins, released in 1964, erred by making the title character too conventionally pretty and somewhat saccharine, although it had the fortunate effect of introducing new readers to the books.

Like the best fantasies, the Mary Poppins books leave readers with a profound sense of the accessibility and value of magic in their lives. The Banks children’s lives are illuminated and enriched by the experiences they have at Mary Poppins’ bidding. Readers, too, are left feeling that the borderline between the real and imagined worlds can be crossed easily— and that that is a very good thing.