they were as leather” (page 101).

The values of the past are also political. Just as Pyle’s family, like so many early Americans, emigrated as dissenting communities from an England they found oppressive, so Robin stands up for natural law and the populist wisdom of the people. Pyle imagines this communal ideal especially through proverbs: there is recurrent reference to Gaffer Swanthold and his wisdom, and while this is humorous, it is never mocking—the proverbs always work in the context. Those proverbs, as in many past cultures, represent the collective wisdom of a thoughtful, plainspoken democratic people whose sense of fun and festivity is matched by an enduring and tolerant patience:... the serious things of this world become so mixed up with the merry things that our life is all of a jumble of black and white, as it were, like the boards of checkered black and white upon which country folk play draughts at the inn beside the blazing fire of a winter’s night. (page 140)

Equally American, and at this distance distinctly impressive, is Pyle’s rejection of Scott’s nationalism: his outlaw’s world does not depend on a basically racist Saxon-versus-Norman opposition, but Scott’s simplicities are subtly reworked. The outlaws all swear by Anglo-Saxon saints and Pyle, showing his wide learning, is aware of the special importance of Saint Dunstan. There is opposition to this moralized Saxonry—a greedy monk speaks slightingly of “a beggarly Saxon saint” (page 246), and when King Henry swears, it is by the French-named Saint Hubert (page 292). But it is clear that “Saxon” in Pyle implies not race and racial exclusion—his family were committed abolitionists. Rather it points to the Anglo-Saxon liberties that were thought to have been downtrodden by the oppressive and aristocratic “Norman yoke,” an idea widely spread in the eighteenth century by Tom Paine, the English yeoman radical so influential in both France and America. The idea of the outlaw’s connection with racial and social democracy persists, thanks partly at least to Pyle’s new American model of the hero, to the anti-Nazi implications of the 1938 Warners’ film star-ring Errol Flynn and the antiracism of the 1991 version with Kevin Costner.

The fighting and feasting and the natural beauties that readers can enjoy so much, whether in prose or in picture, realize a communal ideal of a positive, vigorous world. It is very vigorous: though Pyle seeks to avoid the bloodshed of the ballads—as a child he knew the Civil War and its wholesale slaughter—there is still much fighting and argument. Naomi Wood has commented that Pyle is a Quaker who was fascinated by violence, a wholehearted American who loved and used European sources, an admirer of realism who nevertheless ultimately favored romance in theme and form (page 591). But these are not contradictions; they are signs of the breadth and multiplicity of Pyle’s mind and work, and that dynamic richness as well as his technical mastery, especially in art, is what empowers his masterpiece, The Merry of Adventures of Robin Hood.

Pyle insisted on richness of many kinds. He asserted the value of the past in the present, combined youthful vigor and communal wisdom, trusted young readers to recognize real quality in art and literature, re-created the universal force of Robin Hood as a symbol of an energetic democracy that also knows how to celebrate. Who would refuse his invitation to his version of “the land of Fancy”?

—Stephen Knight

References

Charles D. Abbott, Howard Pyle: A Chronicle, New York, 1925.

Lucien L. Agosta, Howard Pyle, Boston, 1987.

Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography, Ithaca, 2003.

Anne Scott Macleod, “Howard Pyle’s Robin Hood: The Middle Ages for Americans,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 25 (2000), 44—48.

Jill May, “Howard Pyle’s American Interpretation of British Legend,” in Robin Hood: The Many Faces of that Celebrated English Outlaw, ed. Kevin Carpenter, Oldenburg, 1995.

—, “The Hero’s Woods: Pyle’s Robin Hood and the Female Reader,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 11 (1987), 197—200.

Henry C. Pitz, Howard Pyle: Writer, Illustrator, Founder of the Brandywine School, New York, 1975.

Taima M. Ranta, “Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood: The Quintessential Children’s Story,” in Touchstones: Reflections on the Best in Children’s Literature, vol. 2, ed. Perry Nodelmann, West Lafayette, 1987.

Naomi Wood, “Howard Pyle,” The Cambridge Guide to Children’s Books in English, ed. Victor Watson, Cambridge, 2001.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Childrens’ Books Written and Illustrated by Howard Pyle

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883.

Pepper and Salt or Seasoning for Young Folks. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1886.

The Wonder Clock or Four and Twenty Marvelous Tales. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1888.

Otto of the Silver Hand. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1888.

Men of Iron. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1892.

The Garden Behind the Moon: A Real Story of the Moon AngeL New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1895.

The Story of the Champions of the Round Table. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905.

The Story of Sir Launcelot and His Companions. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907.

The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910.

Biography and Criticism

Abbott, Charles D. Howard Pyle, A Chronicle. With an introduction by N. C. Wyeth and many illustrations from Howard Pyle’s works. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1925.

Agosta, Lucien L. Howard Pyle. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987.

Davis, Paul Preston. Howard Pyle: His Life—His Work: A Comprehensive Bibliography and Pictorial Record of Howard Pyle: Illustrator, Author, Teacher: Father of American Illustration, America’s Foremost Illustrator. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 2004.

Elzea, Rowland. Howard Pyle. New York: Scribner, 1975.

—Howard Pyle: Diversity in Depth. Wilmington: Delaware Art Museum, 1973.

Girouard, Mark. The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.

Morse, Willard S., and Gertrude Brincklé. Howard Pyle: A Record of His Illustrations and Writings. Wilmington, DE: Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, 1921; Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1969.

Nesbitt, Elizabeth. Howard Pyle. New York: H. Z. Walck [1966].

Pitz, Henry C. Howard Pyle—Writer, Illustrator, Founder of the Brandywine School. New York: C. N. Potter; distributed by Crown Publishers [1975].

1 Adam Bell, Clym o’ the Clough, and William of Cloudesly were three noted north-country bowmen whose names have been celebrated in many ballads of the olden time.

2 Small sour apples.

3 Bond-servants.

4 Stand for selling.

5 Classes of travelling mendicants that infested England as late as the middle of the seventeenth century. Vide Dakkar’s English Villainies, etc.

6 I.e., in old beggar’s cant, “beaten a man or gallant upon the highway for the money in his purse.” Dakkar’s English Villainies.