Editing Robin Hood (section)

===Rediscovery: Percy and Ritson===
In 1765, [[Thomas Percy (bishop of Dromore)]] published ''[[Reliques of Ancient English Poetry]]'', including ballads from the 17th-century [[Percy Folio]] manuscript which had not previously been printed, most notably [[Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne]] which is generally regarded as in substance a genuine late medieval ballad.

In 1795, [[Joseph Ritson]] published an enormously influential edition of the Robin Hood ballads ''Robin Hood: A collection of all the Ancient Poems Songs and Ballads now extant, relative to that celebrated Outlaw''.<ref>Bewick, et al. Robin Hood : a Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, Now Extant Relative to That Celebrated English Outlaw; to Which Are Prefixed Historical Anecdotes of His Life / by Joseph Ritson. 2nd ed., W. Pickering, 1832 via the State Library of New South Wales, [http://digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?embedded=true&toolbar=false&dps_pid=IE7094075&_ga=2.134573233.1966093815.1589692586-129856077.1543461593 DSM/821.04/R/v. 1]</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Ritson |first1=Joseph |last2=Bewick |first2=Thomas |last3=Tourrier |first3=A. H. |last4=Buckman |first4=E. |title=Robin Hood : a Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, Now Extant Relative to That Celebrated English Outlaw; to Which Are Prefixed Historical Anecdotes of His Life |edition=2nd |volume=1 |location=London |publisher=John C. Nimmo |date=1887 |url=https://archive.org/details/robinhoodcollect01ritsrich |via=a digitized version on The Internet Archive of a boook from the University of California Libraries |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160326201216/https://archive.org/details/robinhoodcollect01ritsrich |archive-date=26 March 2016}}</ref> 'By providing English poets and novelists with a convenient source book, Ritson gave them the opportunity to recreate Robin Hood in their own imagination,'<ref name="Dobson and Taylor 1997, p54">Dobson and Taylor (1997), p.  54.</ref> Ritson's collection included the Gest and put the [[Robin Hood and the Potter]] ballad in print for the first time. The only significant omission was [[Robin Hood and the Monk]] which would eventually be printed in 1806. In all, Ritson printed 33 Robin Hood ballads<ref>In his table of contents, he separated the longer ballads from the shorter ballads into two parts; Part 1 containing the longer ballads were numbered I-V while the shorter ballads in Part 2 were numbered I-XXVIII</ref> (and a 34th, now commonly known as [[Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon]] that he included as the second part of [[Robin Hood Newly Revived]] which he had retitled "Robin Hood and the Stranger").<ref>Ritson, ''Robin Hood: A collection of all the Ancient Poems Songs and Ballads now extant, relative to that celebrated Outlaw''. p. 155, 1820 edition.</ref> Ritson's interpretation of Robin Hood was also influential, having influenced the modern concept of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor as it exists today.<ref>J.C. Holt, Robin Hood, 1982, pp. 184, 185</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=VcqTBQAAQBAJ&pg=PR40 Robin Hood, Volume 1], Joseph Ritson</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://sixteenthcenturyscholars.wordpress.com/2016/05/11/robin-hood-doctor-who-and-the-emergence-of-the-a-modern-rogue/|title=Robin Hood, Doctor Who, and the emergence of the a modern rogue!|date=11 May 2016|access-date=7 April 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190330045123/https://sixteenthcenturyscholars.wordpress.com/2016/05/11/robin-hood-doctor-who-and-the-emergence-of-the-a-modern-rogue/|archive-date=30 March 2019|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ooqHNSvcXZYC&pg=PA42|title=Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain: The Legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood|first=Stephanie|last=Barczewski|date=2 March 2000|publisher=OUP Oxford|isbn=9780191542732|access-date=7 April 2020|via=Google Books}}</ref> Himself a supporter of the principles of the [[French Revolution]] and admirer of [[Thomas Paine]], Ritson held that Robin Hood was a genuinely historical, and genuinely heroic, character who had stood up against tyranny in the interests of the common people.<ref name="Dobson and Taylor 1997, p54"/> J.&nbsp;C. Holt has been quick to point out, however, that Ritson "began as a Jacobite and ended as a Jacobin," and "certainly reconstructed him [Robin] in the image of a radical."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Holt |first1=J.&nbsp;C. |title=Robin Hood |date=1982 |publisher=Thames and Hudson |location=London |page=185}}</ref>

In his preface to the collection, Ritson assembled an account of Robin Hood's life from the various sources available to him, and concluded that Robin Hood was born in around 1160, and thus had been active in the reign of Richard I. He thought that Robin was of aristocratic extraction, with at least 'some pretension' to the title of Earl of Huntingdon, that he was born in an unlocated Nottinghamshire village of Locksley and that his original name was [[Robert Fitzooth]]. Ritson gave the date of Robin Hood's death as 18 November 1247, when he would have been around 87 years old. In copious and informative notes Ritson defends every point of his version of Robin Hood's life.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://archive.org/stream/robinhoodcollect01ritsrich/robinhoodcollect01ritsrich_djvu.txt |title=Robin Hood: a collection of all the ancient poems, songs and ballads, now extant, relative to that celebrated English outlaw |year=1887 |access-date=11 January 2016 |archive-date=25 May 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150525181059/http://archive.org/stream/robinhoodcollect01ritsrich/robinhoodcollect01ritsrich_djvu.txt |url-status=dead }} Retrieved 12 January 2016.</ref> In reaching his conclusion Ritson relied or gave weight to a number of unreliable sources, such as the Robin Hood plays of Anthony Munday and the Sloane Manuscript. Nevertheless, Dobson and Taylor credit Ritson with having 'an incalculable effect in promoting the still continuing quest for the man behind the myth', and note that his work remains an 'indispensable handbook to the outlaw legend even now'.<ref>Dobson and Taylor (1997), pp. 54–55.</ref>

Ritson's friend [[Walter Scott]] used Ritson's anthology collection as a source for his picture of Robin Hood in ''[[Ivanhoe]]'', written in 1818, [[Ivanhoe#Lasting influence on the Robin Hood legend|which did much to shape the modern legend]].<ref>Dobson and Taylor (1997), p. 56.</ref>