Robin Hood in popular culture the anonymous "Robin Hood: A Tale of the Olden Time" (1819), and a few months later "Ivanhoe" by Walter Scott, 1819. "Ivanhoe" was Scott's first novel where history and romance is combined. Robin Hood in this book is the saviour of the nation. The Upper classes need the working classes as much as the working classes rely on their 'betters'. Scott's tale is significant because it is the first time that Robin is presented as an Anglo-Saxon freedom fighter, a theme which many later Victorian Robin Hood novels would utilise. The next novel following Scott was Thomas Love Peacock's novella
Robin Hood casting doubt on this Robyn Hood's supposed earlier career as outlaw and rebel. It has long been suggested, notably by John Maddicott, that "Robin Hood" was a stock alias used by thieves. What appears to be the first known example of "Robin Hood" as stock name for an outlaw dates to 1262 in Berkshire, where the surname "Robehod" was applied to a man apparently because he had been outlawed. This could suggest two main possibilities: either that an early form of the Robin Hood legend was already well established in the mid-13th century; or alternatively that the name "Robin Hood"