18th century… The Working Man’s Robin Hood: The Writings of Allan Cunningham (1784–1842) 24 Jan 202024 Jan 2020 By Stephen Basdeo In 1832, the publisher Charles Knight had a bright idea: every Saturday he would publish a new magazine which whose aim was to educate working-class readers about…
Anglo-Saxon… No Longer a “Dark Age”: Susan Oosthuizen’s “The Emergence of the English” (2019) 10 Apr 2019 By Stephen Basdeo Professor Susan Oosthuizen’s The Emergence of the English (2019) is a lively and engaging book which takes aim at many widely and long-held assumptions about the emergence…
11th Century… Radical Robin Hood: “Little John and Will Scarlet” (1865) 14 Oct 2016 Introduction With the exception of Pierce Egan the Younger’s Robin Hood and Little John, or, The Merry Men of Sherwood Forest (1838-40), Robin Hood penny dreadfuls have generated very little…
14th Century… Wat Tyler: 18th- & 19th-Century Literary Afterlives 30 Jun 201630 Jun 2016 “When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?” - John Ball, Radical Preacher, 14th Century Late fourteenth-century England had its fair share of problems: socio-economic tensions had…
19th Century… Judging Robin Hood: Negotiating Outlawry in Nineteenth-Century Texts 25 Jun 2016 Paper Read at Plymouth University Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference 23-24 June 2016. Abstract. Robin Hood needs no introduction. He is the noble outlaw who steals from the rich to give to…
11th Century… The Legend of Robin Hood 4 May 20164 May 2016 A Forthcoming Public Talk to be delivered at Pontefract Castle, Sunday 8 May 2016 Introduction The Renaissance poet Michael Drayton authored a monumental work entitled Poly-Olbion which was published in…
