Category: 19th century medievalism

A Late-Georgian Adaptation of “Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, Valour, and Marriage” in Pierce Egan’s “Book of Sports” (1832) | Stephen Basdeo

Pierce Egan’s neglected 1832 poem “The Queen of the Bow” transformed a seventeenth-century Robin Hood ballad into a polished pastoral for contemporary sports readers. Drawing upon classical imagery and antiquarian scholarship, it presents Clorinda—not Maid Marian—as Robin’s wife and a formidable huntress, revealing the legend’s continuing imaginative, remarkable flexibility.