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
Friar Tuck a story similar to Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar. (The oldest surviving copy of this ballad is from the 17th century.) The character entered the tradition through these folk plays, and he was orginially partnered with Maid Marian: "She is a trul of trust, to serue a frier at his lust/a prycker a prauncer a terer of shetes/a wagger of ballockes when other men slepes." His appearance in "Robin Hood and the Sheriff" means that he was already part of the legend around the time when the earliest surviving copies of the Robin Hood ballads were being made. A