Maid Marian

Robin Hood as high comedy: Marian, an heiress who can shoot better than most of the outlaws, walks out of her own wedding into Sherwood, and the friar, the baron and the sheriff argue about it in perfect Regency prose. Peacock spent his days as an official of the East India Company and his evenings mocking everyone he knew; this 1822 novel is his lightest, and the songs in it are genuinely good.