Mary Poppins (character) Mary Poppins (character) Mary Poppins is a fictional character and the eponymous protagonist of P. L. Travers's "Mary Poppins" books and all of their adaptations. A magical English nanny, she blows in on the East Wind and arrives at the Banks home at Number Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane, London, where she is given charge of the Banks children and teaches them valuable lessons with a magical touch. Travers gives Poppins the accent and vocabulary of a real London nanny: cockney base notes overlaid with a strangled gentility. Julie Andrews, who played the character in the 1964 film adaptation, won the
Mary Poppins though stern, vain and usually cross, has a magical touch that makes her wonderful. Among the things Jane and Michael experience are a tea party on a ceiling with Mr. Wigg, a trip around the world with a compass, the purchase of gingerbread stars from the extremely old Mrs. Corry, a meeting with the Bird Woman, a birthday party at the zoo among the animals, and a Christmas shopping trip with a star named Maia from the Pleiades cluster of the Taurus constellation. In the end, in what is perhaps the most iconic image associated with Mary Poppins, she opens