The Life and Death of Robin Hood (Annotated)

The Definitive Anthology — The Medieval Ballads, Ritson's 1795 Life of Robin Hood, Peacock's Maid Marian, and Pyle's Merry Adventures

By: Henry Bugalho, Walter Scott, Thomas Love Peacock, Joseph Ritson, Howard Pyle

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The complete Robin Hood — the medieval ballads, the antiquarian recovery, the Romantic rewriting, the Victorian classic. The most comprehensive single-volume edition of the legend in existence.

For nearly seven hundred years, the outlaw of Sherwood Forest has refused to die. From the green-clad bowmen of the medieval ballads to the political radical of Joseph Ritson's 1795 Life, from Walter Scott's Ivanhoe to Howard Pyle's Victorian classic, from the BBC to the A24 film — Robin Hood survives because every age has needed him. This Erato Press edition gathers the legend in its original texts, in four parts, tracing the myth from its medieval origins to its Victorian crystallization.

PART ONE: THE MEDIEVAL BALLADS — Ten ballads from the Child collection, modernized for contemporary readers:

• A Gest of Robyn Hode — The foundational long ballad, ca. 1450
• Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne · Robin Hood and the Monk · Robin Hood's Death · Robin Hood and the Potter
• Robin Hood and the Butcher · Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar (introducing Friar Tuck) · Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires · Robin Hood and Allen a Dale · Robin Hood and Maid Marian

All five founding characters appear in their original ballad-source: Little John, Will Scarlet, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, Allen a Dale.

PART TWO: THE ANTIQUARIAN RECOVERY — Joseph Ritson's Life of Robin Hood (1795):

The first modern biography of the outlaw, by the radical antiquarian who invented the politically charged Robin Hood that every later writer inherited. Ritson's Life, his preface, and his 118 documentary notes — complete.

PART THREE: THE ROMANTIC REWRITING — Scott and Peacock:

• Selections from Ivanhoe (1819) by Walter Scott — Four chapters featuring Locksley/Robin Hood: the Tournament of Archers, the Forest Outlaws, the Spoils of Torquilstone, and the great revelation — "I am Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest" — before King Richard.
• Maid Marian (1822) by Thomas Love Peacock — Complete and unabridged.

PART FOUR: THE VICTORIAN CLASSIC — Howard Pyle:

• The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883) — Complete and unabridged. The version every twentieth-century retelling descends from.

Why this edition?

No other edition gathers these texts in a single volume. Until now, the reader who wanted the complete tradition had to assemble five separate volumes. This Erato Press edition includes the complete tradition in one navigable volume — ten ballads, two complete novels, one foundational biography, and four selected chapters from Ivanhoe — with an extensive historical contextualization, a critical afterword (The Myth and Its Metamorphoses), editorial introductions to each section, and biographical notes on Child, Ritson, Scott, Peacock, and Pyle.

About Robin Hood

He may have lived — there are documents, a Robehod in the Yorkshire pipe rolls of 1226, a tradition at Kirklees Priory. He may never have lived at all. What is certain is that the myth has lived continuously since at least 1377, when Langland's Piers Plowman has a character say "I kan rymes of Robyn Hode." Every generation since has rewritten him: the medieval bowman, the Romantic earl-in-exile, the Victorian fairy-tale hero, the political radical, the cinematic icon of Errol Flynn, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe, and the A24 film. All of these Robin Hoods are in this volume.

Part of the Erato Press Classics of World Literature series.

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