Many studies of Robin Hood either are purely literaryb or devote much inconclusive reasoning to trying to identify a historical Robin Hood based on the scanty pre-1400 sources. Pollard recognizes frankly tat we can know very little about the figure of Robin Hood from that fragmentary early material, so he devotes himself to asking the more answerable question: what can we know about the background and reception of the earliest surviving full-scale Robin Hood poems from the mid-fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries? He looks at these sources themselves and compares them with historical evidence about outlaws, fellowships, religious devotion (the original Robin being a devotee of the Virgin Mary) etc. ( )

Not quite what I expected - too much rather dry literary analysis for me, rather than trying to ascertain whether Robin Hood was real, or based on a real figure or figures. Gave up quite quickly. No rating.

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