Abbey Connectors - Close Connectors - Camp Keema Series

Camp Keema Series

The Camp Keema Series introduces Maribel Ritchie (later Marchwood) and Rosalind Firth. The first two books in this series, Crisis in Camp Keema and Peggy and the Brotherhood, are set in a fictionalised Worthing, Sussex. The third, Camp Mystery, is set at Talloires on Lake Annecy, France and introduces Cecily Brown (later Perowne). These three characters enter the Abbey Series in The Abbey Girls Play Up (once more, set mainly in Sussex) and appear again, or are referred to, at intervals later in that series. 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 simplifed - 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. Then, four years later again, she returned to the period between Crisis (1928) and Mystery (1932) and wrote Peggy (1936) which fills in events concerning Rosalind's younger brother and sister, John and Gina, as well as introducing new characters Peggy and Sharly, and letting us see more of Maribel's school life.