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.
Explore how working-class, Black, Jewish, and ethnic minority boxers shaped the golden age of prizefighting. This article examines Daniel Mendoza, Bill Richmond, Tom Molineaux, class, race, and Georgian boxing culture, showing how the prize ring offered fame and opportunity while exposing prejudice, exploitation, and exclusion.
“He is a scout and a pioneer, attacking force and army of occupation, all in one … they go out on long tours through the country, sleeping on the floors of native houses, enduring the most severe physical fatigue, exposed now to great frosts, now to terrible summer heat.”
What have historians said about Robin Hood, who he was, and the social and political context in which the early tales emerged?
The following poem, ‘In a Young Lady’s Heart’, was written by Pierce Egan the Younger in 1843 and published in The Era.
A poem titled Forgive and Forget first published in 1850 in Home Circle | Subscribe Now
Pierce Egan the Younger was a novelist and journalist who lived between 1814 and 1880. The author of several popular novels, he occasionally wrote poetry, such as the one below which originally appeared in the Home Circle about an emigrant who misses home.
A Victorian-era tale of woe and adversity for a brother and sister abandoned by their parents.
This poem was originally written in 1850 and published in the Home Circle, a magazine edited by Pierce Egan the Younger (1814-80): Ye by whom once the clear blue sky / And zephyrs of returning spring / Were hailed with joy, but now no more / Responses from the spirit bring.
Anthony Bynoe, a student-athlete at Richmond: The American International University, turns our attention to the life and works of Pierce Egan (1772–1849)
Pierce Egan’s “Quintin Matsys” is like the Belgian “Les Miserables”; the people of Antwerp rise up and take to the barricades to overthrow the evil aristocrats who oppress them.
Pierce Egan’s “Robin Hood” was an early Victorian bestseller. In the first edition, Egan also appended a collection of Robin Hood ballads alongside his novel, for which he provided the illustrations.
My own research has brought to light further information on the life of penny dreadful author Pierce Egan the Younger (1814-1880), who has only recieved very brief attention in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
The penny dreadful author that you’ve never heard of…