AustLit

'While the Mary Poppins stories have been affectionately received as literature for children since they were first published in 1934, their Australian-born P. L. Travers maintained that she never intended this to be the case. Rather the stories reveal fairy tale as it pertains to those who have lost their childhood: "Grown-ups" (Travers Complete Collection 96) who wish to reconnect with the organically live experience of the child. This act of revisiting and revising one's childhood for the purpose of catharsis is a familiar one and a verifiable tool for the many writers wishing to both expunge haunting memories and at the same time reconnect with a world of unfettered insight and impulse. Confusing the boundaries between memory and fantasy, writers continue to reinvent scenes from their childhoods that enter the collective imagination and become popular legends. The magical worlds of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan's Never Land and Mary Poppins's Fairyland epitomise and inaugurate this reworking of childhood fantasies.' (Introduction)