Abbey Connectors

They 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: The information is all gleaned from the books themselves, or from Monica Godfrey's The World of Elsie Jeanette Oxenham and Her Books.

The publication dates are interesting; Oxenham refers in Abbey Girls Play Up (1930) to events in Cecily Brown's earlier life, which were not fully described until Camp Mystery was published two years later.

Indeed, the version of her story given in Play Up, while naturally being simplified – one cannot relate the whole plot in detail when summarising events for a new acquaintance – misses several important features which Oxenham may not have thought of until she actually came to write Camp Mystery, the book that covers these events, a year or two after writing Play Up.

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 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.

The headmistress's sister, who owns Rocklands House, helps her, and another friend, Lisabel (Elisabel) Durrant (also later Courtney – they marry brothers), to become gardeners, and sends them to Swanley to train.

Lisabel, by this time married with a baby daughter, also plays a significant role in New Girls at Wood End (see the Quellyn/Woodend series above).

The rest of the series introduces Nancybell Morgan (later Farnham), Margery Paine (later Woodburn), Gilbert and Annamaria Seymour, and the 'Rose sisters'.

Here, Oxenham has created a family history for her modern characters by using details from another of her books, published over thirty years earlier.

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.

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.