Alan-a-Dale Lieth Beside The Fountain

This is just a wonderful illustration by Howard Pyle, taken from his classic book, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883).

(To see all posts about Alan-a-Dale please click on the label marked Alan-a-Dale in the right-hand panel or below.)

Frank Bellamy's Robin Hood

This image is taken from the work of the great British graphic artist, Frank Bellamy (1917-1976). Apart from producing strips for famous comics such as The Eagle, Look And Learn and TV 21, Bellamy also produced beautifully illustrated ‘Robin Hood’ episodes, for the Swift comic (20th March 1954-2nd March 1963).

His ‘Robin Hood and his Merrie Men’ and later ‘Robin Hood and Maid Marian’ appeared in Swift between 1956 and 1957. The Complete Frank Bellamy Robin Hood , which includes all those strips, will be published next year (2008).

Gay Hamilton as Marian Fitzwarren

The Scottish actress Gay Hamilton as Lady Marian Fitzwarren, in a publicity shot for the Hammer Studios 1967 film A Challenge for Robin Hood.

Holiday Postcard

I could not resist showing this traditional British holiday postcard after returning to the shores of England after a weeks vacation.

A Gest of Robyn Hode

Above is one of the earliest images of Robin Hood. It comes from the first page of the Gest of Robyn Hode (c.1508) by Scotland’s pioneer printers Walter Chepman and Androw Myller. This Chepman & Myllar print of the Gest is in the National Library, Edinburgh. But this woodcut image of Robin Hood had also been used before, by one of the first printers of English books, Richard Pynson (1448-1529) as an illustration of the knight’s yeoman, in his edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1491) shown below.