Scottish Authors > Andrew Lang Scholar & Man of letters 1844-1912

Andrew Lang, born in Selkirk in 1844, died in Banchory in 1912. He is a well-respected alumnus of St Andrews University where one of his early pieces imagined Dr Johnson on the links. He spent much of his active professional life in London, but he had a considerable knowledge of much of Scotland, and an appreciation of the Scottish character which illuminated his work, and, at the end of his life, led him to begin the influential Highways and byways of the Border, completed by his wife and son. What Lang singularly failed to do was to write either a lasting novel or a really striking poem, but he was a very significant literary figure. His column in Longman's magazine did much to form literary opinion in the late nineteenth century. His contemporaries included Stevenson, whom he often encouraged and almost collaborated with, and George Douglas Brown whom he brought to public notice. Lang's interests were diverse and his expertise considerable. He wrote many elegantly put together books which were, and are, a delight to read. His intellect and his wit can perhaps be best appreciated in Adventures among books. A Snell exhibitioner at Balliol, he became a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and a distinguished classical scholar whose versions of the Odyssey (1879), and the Iliad (1882), are still highly regarded. Like Stevenson, whom he first met there, he went as an invalid to the Riviera, and his first book of poems was Ballads and lyrics of old France (1872). He wrote the narrative poem Helen of Troy (1882), published four other books of poetry and two novels, The Mark of Cain (1886) and The Disentanglers (1902). Of his poems Waitin' for the Glasgow train and The Fairy Minister are sometimes remembered.

His "Borders" edition of Scott has not been surpassed, his biography of Lockhart was exemplary, and he sought to emulate Perrault and the Brothers Grimm in the field of British Folklore. He undertook wide-ranging anthropological research, published in such books as Custom and Myth (1884), Myth, Literature, and Religion (1887), and The Making of Religion (1898). He adapted many well-known fairy stories in the Blue Fairy Book (1889), followed by several other such books for children. He also revived one of the fundamental treatises of Scottish folklore, Robert Kirk's Secret Commonwealth. He published this and other books about folklore in collaboration with Alfred Nutt who, like Lang, was a leading figure in the Society for Psychical Research, and the Folklore Society.

Compton MacKenzie characterised his Pickle the spy as infuriating, but essential reading for any scholar who wished to comprehend the Jacobites. This sums Lang up: his work was rarely the product of completely original scholarship, he was, at times, slapdash, and he allowed his own opinions (always interesting) to intrude into works which perhaps ought to have been more even-handed. His substantial History of Scotland (1900-07) was an idiosyncratic, yet intriguing book. Lang deserves a place as an important Scottish writer.

Louis Stott

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