Everybody has heard of Robin Hood, but very few know about the wealth of materials which record and develop the tradition that sustains the myth. In this book Stephen Knight details and analyses the entire phenomenon of the outlaw, his resistance to authority, and how successive ages have interpreted him. Most accounts of Robin Hood merely retell stories or speculate upon the original original bandit's identity. But Knight's new study, based on wide research and sophisticated literary and sociocultural research, is the first complete analytic account of this major mythic figure, the English outlaw hero who has symbolised many forms of resistance to authority around the world for over five hundred years.