Children's books on the subject of Robin Hood are common in the first two decades
of the nineteenth century in England, and songs from Leonard MacNally's comic opera,
dating from 1784, were likewise current. But the outlaw of Sherwood Forest, with his
libertarian and populist associations, also retains a political connotation for Mary
Shelley's culture, particularly in the representation of the eccentric antiquarian
Joseph Ritson (1752-1803), whose 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 was first published in 1795.