Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, Now Extant Relative to that Celebrated English Outlaw.
RITSON, Joseph.
Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, Now Extant Relative to that Celebrated English Outlaw.
“And I shall think my labour well bestow’d to purpose good, when’t shall be said that I did tell true tales of Robin Hood": Rare Second Edition of Joseph Ritson's Robin Hood
London: William Pickering, 1832.
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Item Number: 151506
Rare second edition of this early and important collection of the lore of English literature’s most famous outlaw, first published in 1795. Octavo, bound in full contemporary crushed levant morocco with gilt titles and tooling to the spine, double gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, with dozens of in-text illustrations, headpieces and tailpieces by acclaimed wood-engraver Thomas Bewick. In near fine condition.
The first "scientific editor" of English folklore (Kunitz & Haycraft, 437), Joseph Ritson dedicated himself to the preservation of ballad poetry. In this work, widely regarded as the finest of Ritson's many volumes, "every extant allusion to Robin Hood is printed and explained" (DNB). The anthology firmly ensconced Robin Hood in the public imagination as a noble outlaw. It also served as a source for Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe (1819); Scott lauded Ritson's effort, claiming, "It is almost impossible to conceive so much zeal, research and industry bestowed on a subject of antiquity."
