Abbey Connectors

Abbey Connectors are titles by Elsie J. Oxenham that connect into her main Abbey SeriesThey fall into several sub-series, listed here in best reading order, with the Abbey Titles they relate to shown in their place in the mini-series, but without publication details, which are on the main Abbey Series page:

Close Connectors

Camp Keema Series

The Quellyn/Woodend Series provides an awkward problem of internal chronology within Oxenham's various book series. The main Abbey Series can be dated to within a year or two by events in the real world that are mentioned in "Girls of the Hamlet Club", although it is recognised that there are anachronisms in the Retrospective Series. But in "The Girl Who Wouldn't Make Friends" we are introduced to Robin (Robertina Brent, later Quellyn) and Gwyneth Morgan (later Lloyd) as twelve-year-olds; although the story starts in the London suburbs, most of the action takes place at 'Quellyn' and Nefyn on the Llŷn Peninsula in North Wales. The next part of their story is told in "Rosamund's Tuckshop" and "Rosamund's Castle", both in the main Abbey Series when they are seventeen or so, about five years later in 'Abbey Time', but which were published eighteen and nineteen years later respectively. These two books are set at 'Wood End School' in Washington, Sussex. Robin's romance and marriage are described in "Robins in the Abbey", published in 1947, and set mainly in Oxfordshire at 'The Abbey' and at 'Quellyn', but in 1957 Oxenham returned to Robin's school career, and produced "New Girls at Wood End", a book about Robin's time as Head Girl, set in the spring following "Rosamund's Castle".

The world of 1909, in which 'motors' can be driven across fields and through gated lanes by a twelve-year-old Gwyneth, and where a telegram is brought from the post office in the nearest town by bicycle, contrasts starkly with the air crash that features in "Robins in the Abbey" and the car accident and BBC news bulletins of "New Girls at Wood End" - and with the ownership and use of the telephone in the latter two titles as a normal and common feature.

Rocklands Series

* Tormentil Grant appears in "The Abbey Girls Go Back to School" (A11) but this is the only real link with the Abbey Series. All three books are set on Lake Bala in North Wales.

ussex Set

These three sets, Sussex, Swiss and Woody Dean, are closely connected to each other, as may be seen by the titles they share. The village of 'Woody Dean', the setting for the Woody Dean Set, is a fictionalised Rottingdean in East Sussex, and the nearby school may be based on Roedean School. The Sussex Set takes place mainly in Pagham though it is never named, and the cathedral city mentioned in the text as 'Eldingham' must be intended as Chichester. "Troubles of Tazy" and "Patience and her Problems" both take place largely in Switzerland, either at the St John's & St Mary's Schools complex where the earlier books in the Swiss Set are based, or in the nearby hostel for girls and ladies, and characters from all three sets appear in these two titles.

"A School Camp Fire" is another of those titles that Oxenham 'revisited', to take characters and bring them into books she wrote later. Several main characters from it attend Helen Robinson's wedding in"School of Ups and Downs" but it has no connection otherwise, and cannot be said to form part of a real series. As a book, it is in itself split into four sub-sections each of which tells a discrete story, though the characters of Priscilla, Katharine and Dorothy-Anne are present throughout the book.

Characters from the Swiss Set also appear or are mentioned in the Camp Keema Series and in the Abbey Series itself, which gives the only connection these titles have with the main series.

* †g = republished in paperback by [http://ggbp.co.uk/ Girls Gone By Publishers]

*"See also" [http://www.bufobooks.demon.co.uk/abbeylnk.htm The Elsie J. Oxenham Society/Abbey Chronicle] web site, which includes extra notes on how the series fit with each other and connect into the Abbey Series.