Peacock's retelling of the legend of Robin Hood is as fresh today as it was when he penned it, nearly two hundred years ago. Here are all the heroes and villains we know and love, recast by a keen Victorian wit: Robin Hood and Maid Marian; Friar Tuck, Little John, and Richard the Lionhearted; Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham. The heroes are heroic (and just a little self-serving, though generous) the villains are villainous (and greedy ); and the tale is told as keenly as it can be.

Maid Marian is the fourth novel of Thomas Love Peacock, published in 1822. Peacock wrote all but the last three chapters of Maid Marian at Marlow in 1818. He wrote to Percy Bysshe Shelley that he did not find "this brilliant summer," of 1818, "very favourable to intellectual exertion" but before it was quite over "rivers, castles, forests, abbeys, monks, maids, kings, and banditti were all dancing before me like a masked ball." However in 1819 Peacock was recruited to the East India Company where his official duties delayed the completion and publication of the novel until 1822. As a result of the delay, it was taken for an imitation of Ivanhoe although its composition had, in fact, preceded Scott's novel. It was soon dramatised with great success by Planché, and was translated into French and German.

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.