P.L. TRAVERS, `MARY POPPINS' AUTHOR.

Byline: Margalit Fox The New York Times

P.L. Travers, who insisted she had never meant to write for children when the magical nanny Mary Poppins leaped from her pen, died Tuesday at her home in London. She was 96.

Travers, a native of Australia who had lived in England since she was a young woman, had been at various times in her life a poet, journalist, essayist, film and theater critic, dancer, Shakespearean actress and scholar of folklore and myth.

But she became renowned for ``Mary Poppins,'' which, if not intended for children, has been devoured by generations of them since its publication in 1934. The book, which has sold millions of copies and has been translated into more than 20 languages, has inspired critical studies, a string of sequels and the 1964 Walt Disney movie musical that starred Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke.

``I think the idea of Mary Poppins has been blowing in and out of me, like a curtain at a window, all my life,'' Travers said in 1964. The critic Richard Lingeman wrote that Travers ``has succeeded in creating a timeless world inhabited by real people and complete unto itself - an immortal world that is summoned into being, unchanged whenever one opens a book.''

A prolific writer who was still publishing well into her 80s, Travers employed a precise, lyrical prose. Her entire body of work, whether for children or adults, is linked by a deep concern with myth and mysticism, a belief in the interconnectedness of human experience, and a ceaseless quest for meaning.

``Her great thing was E.M. Forster's wonderful phrase `Only connect,' '' Jenny Koralek, a children's writer and longtime friend, said by telephone from London on Wednesday. ``That is the key to her entirely: a wonderful ranging mind and heart, putting together the pieces of life.''

A gracious observer of the English proprieties who at the same time did not suffer fools gladly, Travers had deep blue eyes, high cheekbones and a cap of curly dark gold hair. Her likeness appears once, hidden in Mary Shepard's illustrations, in each of the many Mary Poppins books.

Travers, who demonstrated the gravest consideration for children but often displayed a tart impatience with her adult interrogators, was taciturn to the point of secrecy about the details of her personal life.

Partly to render herself anonymous, she signed her work only with her initials instead of the name - Pamela Lyndon Travers - that she adopted when she went on the stage as a young woman.