THE MERRY ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD

by Pyle, Howard

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Book Description

NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1952 Publisher's full printed cloth boards, illustrated endpapers. 8vo. x, 309 pp. Illustrated in color by Lawrence Beall Smith. This is an unmarked copy with only the slightest shelf-wear. FINE. A volume in the Illustrated Junior Library. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood is Pyle's distillation of many Robin Hood legends and ballads, modified to make them suitable for the child audience to which he sought to appeal. He modified the ballad "Robin Hood's Progress to Nottingham", changing it from Robin killing 14 foresters for not paying on a bet, to the robbers threatening Robin, and Pyle has Robin kill only one man who shoots at him first. Tales where Robin steals all that a traveler carried, such as "Robin Hood and the Bishop of Hereford", were changed so that the victim keeps a third, and another third is dedicated to the poor. Pyle did not have much more concern for historical accuracy than the ballads, though he did alter the name of the queen in "Robin Hood and Queen Katherine" to Queen Eleanor, historically compatible with the king with whom Robin made his peace being King Richard the Lionheart. Indeed, none of the tales in the book were Pyle's own invention. However, he wove the tales together to form a unified story. The adventure with the Curtal Friar, for instance, was not an isolated tale, but undertaken to bring back Friar Tuck, because a priest was needed to marry Allan a Dale to his sweetheart Ellen. Again, in "A Gest of Robyn Hode", the knight saved an anonymous wrestler who had won a bout but was likely to be murdered because he was a stranger, and Robin says that this excuses his delay, and that anyone who helps good yeomen is helpful to him; Pyle adapted it so that the wrestler was David of Doncaster, one of Robin's band in "Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow". Several characters that had appeared in only one ballad, such as David of Doncaster and Arthur a Bland, are more fully developed in this novelistic treatment of the tales.. Hard Cover. Fine/No Dust Jacket. Illus. by Lawrence Beall Smith. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.

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