Outlaw Heroes in Myth and History continues and broadens the arguments presented in my earlier book, The Outlaw Legend: A Cultural Tradition in Britain, America and Australia (1996). That was based largely on primary sources from the relevant Anglophone traditions. This present work is much broader in scope and necessarily depends on the research of other scholars from many times, places and cultures. I have needed to revisit some of the material included in The Outlaw Legend to provide necessary continuity and context to the arguments presented here, and occasionally to refine those former arguments in the light of further information and/or my own better understanding. But generally it has been possible to keep references to those figures discussed earlier to a minimum in favour of newly researched material from many other parts of the world. Readers interested in the texts and sources of the English-language ballads and other items cited briefly here will find these in more detail in The Outlaw Legend.

What more is there to say about outlaw heroes? A great deal, it turns out. While many might consider the tradition of the outlawed hero to have died out, as this book argues, it has not only endured but has evolved into viable new forms. While the archetypal outlaw of Sherwood Forest continues to proliferate media representations of all kinds, the Robin Hood principle has also embraced aspects of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, the rise of the celebrity criminal and various other Robin Hood-like activities in real and digital life.