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Robin Hood's Nemesis.

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:42.00 USD Estimated At:85.00 - 125.00 USD
Robin Hood's Nemesis.
An intriguing slender volume, Roberte the Deuyll 'Devil], A Metrical Romance from an Ancient Illuminated Manuscript, London: I. Herbert, 1798. 5 x 7 1/2, 49 pp., original moss-green boards, dark red calf strip, spine perished. Unusual stipple copperplate engravings showing the life of namesake and relation of William the Conqueror, Robert II, Duke of Normandy, "surnamed for his monstrous birth and behaviour." The story, recounted in Middle English rhyming verse, of the birth, life, and death of the man who caused children to "take their legges, and away runne, To theyr fathers as faste as they maye, Roberte the Deuyll dothe come they woulde saye...To kill and Slea was all hys delyght...With hys speare at them dyd thrust, To fight euer more and more he had lust...Then Roberte rode into the countrey, And robbed and kylled many a one, Maydens and wyues he rauyshed pytteouslye, He pulled downe abbeys and houses of stone..." -- the Attila the Hun of Normandy. Disbound and shaken, covers scuffed and much worn; text with two deckled edges, very light foxing, pleasing uniform toning, one plate lacking blank corner, else internally very good.