19th Century… Playing Robin Hood in the Victorian Nursery 21 Jun 202021 Jun 2020 By Stephen Basdeo Thomas Rowland argues that for most of the “mythic” outlaw’s history, “Robin was much more a character of ludic texts, of play games and festival culture, than…
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…
19th Century… “The Vision” by Robin Hood (1841) 16 Jul 2019 Everyone of course loves to investigate appearances of the name of Robin Hood in medieval court records. One of these days, it might finally be proven who the “real” Robin…
18th century… “If they must have a British Worthy, they would have Robin Hood” 7 Jul 2019 By Stephen Basdeo This post originally appeared on the IARHS website Amongst the great writers of eighteenth-century literature, the names of two men stand out: Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) and…
19th Century… Jack Harkaway: The Victorian Harry Potter 26 Jun 2019 By Stephen Basdeo The Victorians in many ways were just like us: they enjoyed a good scandal whenever it was reported in the press, they liked both trashy and high-brow…
14th Century… The Flemish Revolt: Pierce Egan’s “Quintin Matsys” (1838) 28 Dec 2018 By Stephen Basdeo Pierce Egan the Younger (1814–80) is one of my most favourite Victorian authors. The son of the more famous Regency journalist and writer, Pierce Egan (1772–1849), he…
