Mary Shepard Mary Shepard Mary Eleanor Jessie Knox née Shepard (25 December 1909 – 4 September 2000) was an English illustrator of children's books. She is best known for the "Mary Poppins" stories written by P. L. Travers (1934 to 1988): "Mary Shepard: Putting Mary Poppins in the picture", "The Times" of London titled an obituary article. She used her married name Mary Knox outside the publishing industry. She was the daughter of E. H. Shepard, a famous illustrator of children's literature including "Winnie-the-Pooh" by A. A. Milne in the 1920s and a 1931 edition of "The Wind in the Willows" by
Mary Poppins (film) film version of her books would do justice to her creation. In addition, Disney was known at the time primarily as a producer of cartoons and had yet to produce any major live-action work. For more than 20 years, Disney periodically made efforts to convince Travers to allow him to make a "Poppins" film. He finally succeeded in 1961, although Travers demanded and got script approval rights. The Sherman Brothers composed the music score and were also involved in the film's development, suggesting the setting be changed from the 1930s to the Edwardian era. Pre-production and song composition took about