Writing on English folk dance, Elsie J. Oxenham, Jane Austen, May Day and maypole dancing, Elsie J. Oxenham and more!
Published in 1939, A05_Secrets of the Abbey takes place in May and June of l917, Abbey time. Joan and Joy Shirley are eighteen—they apparently have left Miss Macey’s school, although this is not explicitly stated. The story has two main components—discovering what happened to lay-brother Ambrose and his love Lady Jehane after the dissolution of the Abbey, and Jen Robin’s hard but valiant choice [Read more…]
With A04_Schooldays at the Abbey, published by Collins in 1938, we begin the cluster of nine books known as the “Retrospective Titles.” They fall after A03_Girls of the Abbey School (1921) and the order resumes again in publication time with A11_The Abbey Girls Go Back to School (1922). The nine retrospective titles were published between 1938 and 1957, three years before Oxenham’s death. They feature younger girls [Read more…]
A03_The Girls of the Abbey School introduces the important character of Janet (Jen) Robins, who will go on to become one of the strongest exemplars of the “Abbey spirit” of helpfulness and good will. Published in 1921, a year after Oxenham attended the 1920 Vacation School where presumably she discovered, as the Abbey Girls themselves will soon, how wrongly she had been dancing, the book contains a lot of dancing. It is dedicated “To those members of the English Folk Dance Society [Read more…]