Writing on English folk dance, Elsie J. Oxenham, Jane Austen, May Day and maypole dancing, Elsie J. Oxenham and more!
Published in 1929, A18_The Abbey Girls at Home begins three weeks after the last installment ended in May of 1923 and runs through Valentine’s Day of the following year. It is a rather somber book with, if I have counted them correctly, five deaths, a serious accident, and even some mental health issues. While the Hamlet Club does hold a dance out of doors, there is not much in this installment for folk dancers.
Left: Maidlin is about to be run over! [Read more…]
Published in 1925, A15_The Abbey Girls in Town begins in December 1921, Abbey Time, and concludes in May of 1922. It is the third novel in the Mary-Dorothy and Biddy Devine story arc and one that mostly resolves Mary’s “problem”—that of both unhealthy dreaminess and an over-idealization of Joy Shirley. After this installment, Biddy largely disappears, though she will get her own novel in A21_Biddy’s Secret. There are two major dance episodes in it: one at the Chelsea Polytechnic Christmas dance school, where we meet again with Cecil Sharp (“the Prophet”) and his teachers, and one of a children’s dance performance.
In 1925, Elsie J. Oxenham was forty-four and was well-established as one of the leading writers of books for girls, having published 30 books [Read more…]
Several weeks ago I wrote in general about the horrors of the Collins abridgments—here with A14_The Abbey Girls Again, we come face to face with them! The abridged version removes not only many of the folk-dance sequences, but a great deal of character development. The original version is much more coherent, if wordier. In this episode, folk dancing appears as having spiritual, moral, physical, and psychologically redemptive powers. [Read more…]
Published in 1923 and set, Abbey Time, in March through April of 1921, A13_The New Abbey Girls introduces two younger key characters: Rosamund Kane and Madalena (Maidlin) di Ravarati. These girls will support important plot arcs now that Joan Shirley has moved off-stage after her marriage. The New Abbey Girls is a strong episode and one that shows the often-difficult Joy Shirley at her best. In a very mild style, apparent only upon re-reading and thus knowledge of the future, it also starts off her romance. This installment again showcases Cecil Sharp’s folk-dance teachers, particularly “Madam/Duchess” (Helen Kennedy North) and the Pixie (Daisy Caroline Daking). There are many treats for folk-dancers below! [Read more…]
The current theme of this blog is an examination of Elsie J. Oxenham’s 39-book Abbey Girls series plus some Connectors, in reading order, focusing on the folk dance aspects they contain. With A11_The Abbey Girls Go Back to School, we hit the richest vein of description of Cecil Sharp and his teachers. This volume was published in 1922, and EJO may well have been planning or drafting it while she attended Sharp’s Vacation School at Cheltenham in 1920—it resonates with her now passionate involvement with English folk dance and her admiration of and attachment to Sharp and two of his teachers. If you are a folk dancer and can only read one Abbey Girl book (or wish to only read one!), this is the one to pick up. The book is dedicated thus: “To Helen Kennedy North and D.C. Daking with thanks for all they have given to me.” Helen Kennedy North (sister of Douglas Kennedy, who ran the EFDS after Sharp’s death) is found herein as “Madam” and Daisie Daking as “the Pixie.” [Read more…]
This installment runs from May through August 1918, “Abbey Time” (which is calculated based on the characters’ ages and which May Queen is ruling), but it contains physical elements, such as transatlantic commercial air travel and ballet, more suitable to 1951, which is when the book was published. I didn’t notice this uneasy interpolation when I read Strangers at the Abbey out of order, but when we return to the installments published in the 1920s, we will return to a world where motor cars were open, where phones in houses were known but rare, and where women automatically gave up their jobs upon marriage. Strangers is also an installment in which the Abbey Girls and their seventy-one-year old creator wax eloquent [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…]
After A01_Girls of the Hamlet Club, Elsie Oxenham published eight books, many dealing with the Camp Fire movement, before returning to Miss Macey’s school and establishing the true beginning of the story of the girls who live in the Abbey of Gracedieu. A02_The Abbey Girls was published in 1920 but is set two years after Cicely’s story, running from February through May 1916 in “Abbey Time.” There is no mention of the War.
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Elsie J. Oxenham’s ninth book, published in October of 1914, is the “origins” story of the Abbey Girls series, and is one of the books that contains the most folk dancing, culminating in a lengthy description of a performance of folk dance and song to honor the first-crowned May Queen of the series. If you are a folk dancer [Read more…]