Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley (25 November 1880 – 9 January 1960), was an English girls' story writer, who took the name Oxenham as her pseudonym when her first book, Goblin Island, was published in 1907. Her Abbey Series of 38 titles are her best-known and best-loved books.Her major publisher, Collins, republished books from this series (some titles as many as 10 times) between 1920 and 1960 to cater for the demand from readers (Sims & Clare). In her lifetime she had 87 titles published and another two have since been published by her niece, who discovered the manuscripts in the early 1990s. She is considered a major figure among girls' story writers of the first half of the twentieth century, being one of the 'Big Three' with Elinor Brent-Dyer and Dorita Fairlie Bruce.Sims & Clare. Angela Brazil is as well-known - perhaps more so - but did not write her books in series about the same group of characters or set in the same place or school, as did the Big Three.
Oxenham's books are widely collected and there are several Appreciation Societies: in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa; with a total membership of over six hundred, some of whom live in the US, Canada, India and The Netherlands although belonging to one or more of the societies mentioned.
Biography Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley was born in Southport, Lancashire, England, in November 1880, to an English father and a Scottish mother.
Before she was 2 years old the family moved to Ealing, West London, where they lived for nearly forty years. She and her sisters went to private schools and attended Ealing Congregational Church. The six Dunkerley children in order of age were: Elsie, Marjory (Maida), Roderic, Theodora (Theo), Erica and Hugo. The family lived in five different houses during their time in Ealing and moved to Worthing, Sussex, in 1922. She took the surname Oxenham as her pen name when Goblin Island was published in 1907. Her father, William Arthur Dunkerley, had used the pen-name "John Oxenham" for many years prior to this.
During the London years, Elsie Oxenham became involved in the British Camp Fire Girls movement, and qualified as a Guardian - the leader of a group of Camp Fire Girls. She ran this Camp Fire Group for some 6 years, until the move to Sussex. One of the Camp Fire members was Margaret Bayne Todd - later Margaret, Lady Simey - who appears in Abbey Girls in Town and to whom that title was dedicated. It is thought that she was the 'original' on whom the characters of both Jenny-Wren and Littlejan were based.Godfrey 2003
At some point during her time in London Oxenham joined the English Folk Dance Society (EFDS - it did not become the English Folk Dance and Song Society [EFDSS] until much later). She then discovered how 'badly' she had been doing the dances - and teaching them! - as related in The Abbey Girls Go Back to School (published 1922). Everything that the 'Writing Person' [her on-page persona] told Maidlin, Jen and Joy, in The New Abbey Girls (published 1923), about dancing, Grey Edward, and the Camp Fire had happened as described.
After the family had moved to Worthing, Oxenham taught folk dancing in nearby villages and schools. She tried to start another Camp Fire but that was not a success as most of the girls of the right age were already Girl Guides.
At first, the family all lived at Farncombe Road, Worthing, but after their mother died the four sisters moved out, living in pairs, Elsie with Maida, and Erica with Theo. None of the sisters married, but both brothers did. Elsie died in a local nursing Home in January 1960, a few days after Erica.biographical information, taken with permission, from Monica Godfrey's short biographical piece on the Abbey Chronicle website
Books and series
Abbey Series
Oxenham is best known for her Abbey Series of 38 titles which chart the lives of the main characters from their mid-teens until their daughters reach a similar age. The Hamlet Club, formed in the first book in the series Girls of the Hamlet Club, was set up to combat snobbery in the school. Underlying the club’s overt activities of folk-dancing and rambles was its motto 'To be or not to be', and its badge, the Whiteleaf Cross. These were both symbols of deeper meanings. The motto, deliberately using a quote from the Shakespeare play Hamlet, is taken to mean to make the right choice, usually duty above self-interest, when it arises.Girls of the Hamlet Club (1914), pp. 163-4. Throughout the Abbey Series the various main characters come up against this choice and its consequences, and are shown growing and maturing through making difficult decisions. The badge, taken from a landmark local to the area in which the series is set, is also symbolic—as is any cross—of sacrifice.op cit, p.166.
The Abbey of the series is almost a character in itself. Based on Cleeve Abbey in Somerset, it first appears as a romantic ruin in the second of the series The Abbey Girls. By the end of this book, the cousins Joan and Joy Shirley are living in Abinger Hall, in the gardens of which the Abbey is situated. Joy has been discovered to be the granddaughter of the late owner, Sir Antony Abinger, and the Hall is left to her, but Joan, who was not related to Sir Antony, has been left the Abbey "Because of [her] love for it, and because [her] knowledge of it was so thorough."The Abbey Girls (1920), p. 317. The Abbey and its influence pervades the whole series. Characters try to live up to the precepts of the early Cistercian monks who lived there, and even when facing difficult situations abroad, find that the Abbey ethos helps them find the way through to the right decision.Biddy’s Secret (1932), p. 132-3
Oxenham depicted herself directly and indirectly in several places within the Abbey series. As "The Writing Person" she is depicting herself as she was in the early 1920s, over 40 years of age and going to the folk dance classes run by the English Folk Dance Society in London.The New Abbey Girls (1923), pp. 227ff; and The Abbey Girls Again (1924), p. 97. Once Mary-Dorothy Devine, first introduced in The Abbey Girls Again, becomes a writer, statements she makes about the writing experience must logically be those of Oxenham herself. She talks of "finding" the books, and of "listening in to [her own] private wireless".The Abbey Girls in Town (1925), p. 163. Some fifteen years later according to the internal chronology of the series, and nearly thirty years later in real time, Mary-Dorothy advises Rachel Ellerton, a younger writer who has been trying to get her adult fiction published, to try writing for children:
This statement, from near the end of Oxenham's writing career, seems to convey Oxenham’s own writing credo. It is quoted in its entirety as one of the few insights Oxenham gives into her own reasons for writing. In her very first book, Goblin Island, published nearly fifty years earlier, and written in the first person, Jean, the narrator, says,
This would indicate that her own start in writing was similar; it is certainly known that she typed up the writings of her father, John Oxenham, a task later taken on by her sister Erica Dunkerley, who also used the pseudonym Oxenham for her published writings.Erica Oxenham, J.O. & Scrap-Book of J.O..
Themes and influences
Religion Oxenham's religious background was in Congregationalism. This gave a Protestant ethos to her writing and her expressed opinions. Many of her characters go through difficult periods in their lives, and their religious beliefs help them through. Several of the books written in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly, include discussions between characters as to the meaning of life and the reasons behind events.for example, in Abbey Girls at Home (1929), pp. 54-5. These in-depth conversations tend to appear less frequently in the later books, but even as late as 1948, in A Fiddler for the Abbey Mary-Dorothy Devine, who has become "advisor-in-chief to the clan"Robins in the Abbey (1947), p. 226. talks to Rosalind Kane about the biblical concept of "rain falling on the just and the unjust" and the reasons behind the occurrence of both good and bad events.A Fiddler for the Abbey (1948), pp 106-7.
Folk dancing Folk dancing is a strong influence in many of the books. From Girls of the Hamlet Club (1914) and At School with the Roundheads (1915) until The Girls of the Abbey School (1921), it was shown as a fairly easy thing for girls to do, and to teach each other. By the time of The Abbey Girls Go Back to School (1922) it is apparent that Oxenham herself had come into contact with the English Folk Dance Society and realised that the dances were not so simple after all. The books written from this time for the next six years or so, until Abbey Girls Win Through (1928) depict members of the EFDS hierarchy with affection and almost reverence.see, for instance, the depiction of 'The Pixie' as a wise, all-knowing counsellor in Abbey Girls in Town (1925), pp. 145-9. It seems that something happened to spoil this relationship, as after 1930 these characters do not appear in the books, and are hardly referred to again, certainly not in such glowing terms. The EFDS makes a brief appearance in An Abbey Champion (1946), but the personnel are no longer named. It may have been as simple as the move to Worthing and the impossibility of maintaining as close a friendship at a distance of some sixty miles, but it has been conjectured that 'Madam' (Helen Kennedy North) and 'The Pixie' (Daisy Caroline Daking) may have objected to the way they were being portrayed.see articles by Hilary Clare for The Abbey Chronicle, revised for the Abbey Chronicle web archive on 'Madam' and 'The Pixie' Oxenham never lost the love of folk dancing itself, however, and always shows it as a healthy form of exercise, and a way of lifting oneself out of depression.see, for example, the 'rescue' of Mary-Dorothy Devine in The Abbey Girls Again.
Camp Fire Camp Fire plays a large part in several of Oxenham’s books published between 1917 and 1940. Oxenham was a Camp Fire Guardian when she lived in Ealing, but the attempt to form a group in Sussex failed. The Camp Fire ideals of Work, Health and Love–'Wohelo'–and the training for young girls in household tasks and cookery it provided, were integral to Oxenham's own philosophy, and underlie the plots of several books. From the Camp Fire as an integral part of a school in A School Camp Fire (1917) and The Crisis in Camp Keema (1928) to the lone Camp Fire Girl, Barbara Holt, in The Junior Captain (1923) and Maidlin becoming a Torchbearer in Maidlin Bears the Torch (1937), Camp Fire is always shown as a way of developing character. As Oxenham became less involved with the organisation, and came more into contact with the Girl Guides, the contrast between the two organisations and their aims are shown,for instance, in Peggy and the Brotherhood (1936), where the whole plot turns on this contrast. and eventually the reality of the changed situation in England at the time meant that Guides were more often mentioned in her books than Camp Fire.
Legacy
Reputation Elsie J. Oxenham is considered by collectors of British Girls' Fiction to be one of the 'Big Three'; the other two being Elinor Brent-Dyer and Dorita Fairlie Bruce. Although Angela Brazil is the first name to come to mind for non-specialists, she did not create long series as the other three did, and in terms of collecting and interest Brazil is less popular than they are.