Ericsson, John Olof - Robin Hoods Hämnd

Cover of Danish adaptation (1939) / Private collection.

By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2020-06-15. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2020-06-15.

Beginning in the mid-1920s, Stockholm school teacher, poet, travel writer, translator, and writer of children's books, John O. Ericsson,^[1] published a good handful of children's books on Robin Hood that were to become the most frequently translated, adapted, republished and reprinted oeuvre on the outlaw by any Nordic writer. The total number of printings in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland will probably turn out to exceed 100.

Ericsson's Robin Hood books were not only translated but adapted and/or abridged, titles were sometimes deliberately changed, sometimes inadvertently interchanged. The result is a rather confused situation, which could only be fully cleared up by someone with easy access to all issues of the books. While IRHB feels fairly confident that the later printings, adaptations and translations etc. actually inspected have been connected with the correct Swedish first editions, this cannot be said for items not owned or seen.