This edition includes new illustrations and The Gest of Robyn Hood, one of the oldest surviving tales. Holt reconstructs the historical basis of the stories but never loses sight of the human imagination that sustained them. Robin Hood is an archetypal figure in English folklore, whose story originates from. The legend of Robin Hood has enthralled people from the first ballads to contemporary movies. Parts of the story that we now take for granted-Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, Robin as robber of the rich and giver to the poor, even Sherwood Forest-played little or no part in the original tales, and were added as the centuries passed and the legends grew. He assesses the evidence for the historical Robin Hood and finds that the tale originated with the yeomen and hangers-on of the households of noblemen and gentry in the later Middle Ages. In this definitive work, Professor Sir James Holt, one of Britain’s premier historians and author of the standard work on the Magna Carta, unravels pure invention from real possibility and offers the results of some thirty years of research.

The man, if he existed at all, lived even earlier. Educated at Bradford Grammar School, Holt graduated, and subsequently took his DPhil, at the University of Oxford.

The legend of Robin Hood began more than 600 years ago. Professor Sir James Clarke Holt FBA (born 26 April 1922) is an English medieval historian and was the third Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University. Holt (UK and US: Thames and Hudson, 1982) is a comprehensive survey of the Robin Hood of ballad, history, legend, and fiction.

Robin hood by jc holt