Robin Hood

This historical study examines the Robin Hood of the earliest ballads and of later legend, asking who the outlaw was supposed to be and what kind of society produced him. Holt works from the medieval poems, legal records of real outlaws, and the geography of Barnsdale, Sherwood, and the northern roads. He treats the yeoman hero, the king, the sheriff, and the forest law as products of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England rather than as a Saxon resistance tale. Later gentrification of Robin into an earl is separated from the early tradition. The book is archival history of a legend, not a retelling of the stories as fiction.

Bound in green cloth cover blocked with a multicolour illustration. Dark green endpapers. Bright orange slipcase.