Maid Marian (Illustrated Edition

Maid Marian is the love of the legendary English outlaw Robin Hood. Stemming from another, older tradition, she became associated with Robin Hood in the 16th century. The earliest medieval Robin Hood stories gave him no female companion. Maid Marian was originally a character in May Games festivities (held during May and early June, most commonly around Whitsun) and is sometimes associated with the Queen or Lady of May of May Day. Indeed, Marian remained associated with such celebrations long after the fashion of Robin Hood had faded again. She became associated with Robin Hood in this context, as Robin Hood became a central figure in May Day, associated as he was with the forest and archery. Both Robin and Marian were certainly associated with May Day festivities in England (as was Friar Tuck); these were originally two distinct types of performance Alexander Barclay, writing in c.1500, refers to "some merry fytte of Maid Marian or else of Robin Hood" but the characters were brought together.

The Marian of the May Games is likely derived from the French tradition of a shepherdess named Marion and her shepherd lover Robin (not Robin Hood). The best known example of this tradition is Adam de la Halle's Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, circa 1283.

Marian did not immediately gain the unquestioned role as Robin's love; in "Robin Hood's Birth, Breeding, Valor, and Marriage", his sweetheart is "Clorinda the Queen of the Shepherdesses". Clorinda survives in some later stories as an alias of Marian.

With the rise of modern feminism in the 20th century, the character has often been depicted as an adventurer again, sometimes as a crack archer herself. In modern times, a common ending for Robin Hood stories became that he married Maid Marian and left the woods for a civilized, aristocratic life.

Thomas Love Peacock (18 October 1785 23 January 1866) was an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company. He was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work. Peacock wrote satirical novels, each with the same basic setting characters at a table discussing and criticising the philosophical opinions of the day.

Peacock was born in Weymouth, Dorset, the son of Samuel Peacock and his wife Sarah Love, daughter of Thomas Love a retired master of a man-of-war in the Royal Navy. His father was a glass merchant in London, partner of a Mr Pellatt, presumed to be Apsley Pellatt (17631826). Peacock went with his mother to live with her family at Chertsey in 1791 and in 1792 went to a school run by Joseph Harris Wicks at Englefield Green where he stayed for six and a half years.

Peacock died at Lower Halliford, 23 January 1866, from injuries sustained in a fire in which he had attempted to save his library.

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