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Archives for February 2021

Elsie J. Oxenham and Camp Fire, Part III: American Series Novels for Girls

February 21, 2021 By allisonmthompson 1 Comment

This week’s post looks at pre-WWII American Camp Fire series books for girls, books that could have represented competition for Elsie J. Oxenham, had her books been published in the U.S. Why are we doing this? Partly because it is fun, and partly because by looking at how other authors treated Camp Fire we can gain some insights into Elsie’s approach. The differences are night and day—it’s not just that Oxenham was, generally speaking, a better writer than these series writers (although, of those that I have read, Margaret Vandercook’s works are quite good and very readable), but also that she was a different writer—Camp Fire represented something different to her than it did to many of the series writers. While we don’t know whether other authors were personally familiar with Camp Fire—as we’ll see below, some of them seem to have just cribbed from the Handbook—we know that EJO was Guardian of Camp Watéwin (The Camp of Those Who Conquer) from 1916 to 1922, where she took the name of Wenonah, the Eldest Daughter.

(Above: the image used on this series by Vandercook. When my sisters and I canoed we called the girl in the middle the Beautiful Lady Passenger (still a family term), but we faced forward. It makes more sense to face backward as the BLP’s weight would be more in the center of the canoe. And, yes, that is a swastika on the prow—this was and still is a symbol of prosperity and peace in some cultures, despite its modern connection to Nazism.)

By the way, none of the American titles I have read yet address folk dancing. As I noted in earlier posts, while dancing was an activity for which a girl could earn Honors, it did not make its way into the series books. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Abbey Girls, Uncategorized Tagged With: Camp Fire, Elsie J. Oxenham, girls' series books, Margaret Vandercook, Nancy Drew

Elsie J. Oxenham, the Kirkby Malzeard Sword Dance and Captain of the Fifth

February 7, 2021 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

Dear Readers, this week’s post is a covid-related detour: due to an early retirement plan offered at my place of work, an option for which I missed the bar by three months, I have now taken on additional duties there and am wearing so many hats that it interferes with my blogging as well as my desire to watch all the seasons of Laurie & Fry playing Bertie and Jeeves. So, while I continue to work on two long posts on both Camp Fire mysteries and the next Abbey Girls installment, An Abbey Champion, here is a little digression on Captain of the Fifth (1922), the second in the Swiss Series and one that shows Anastasia (Tazy, or “Taisez-vous”) Kingston, teaching the Kirkby Malzeard and Flamborough sword dances to the girls at St. Mary’s School in the Swiss Alps. Most of the focus is on the first dance.

My copy of Captain of the Fifth came as a freebie with another purchase—a freebie because it arrived in a plastic bag as a pile of sheets of photocopied paper that had been painstakingly folded and then glued together page back-to-back with page and also along the back spine in a sort of DIY perfect binding. With all the copying and folding and gluing, [Read more…]

Filed Under: Abbey Girls, Uncategorized Tagged With: Abbey Girls, Elsie J. Oxenham, English folk dance, Flamborough Sword Dance, Kirkby Malzeard sword dance, longsword dance

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