In this section are examples of Lang's work on contemporary fiction and poetry and the question of writing itself. He wrote a great deal on individual authors, sometimes in introductions to editions, such as Scott, Dickens and Dumas, for whom he wrote prefaces to every volume of their complete works. Frequently, too, he published articles on individual writers, such as those later collected from the St. James's Gazette in Letters to Dead Authors (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1886), or on writers generally, as in those from the American newspaper The Independent collected in Letters on Literature (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1889). The two essays selected here, ‘Of Modern English Poetry’ (Letters on Literature, pp. 1–24) and ‘Victorian Literature’, give Lang's assessment of contemporary authors. The first was originally for an American readership and the addressees of the letters are not real persons but imaginary correspondents representing types of Americans. ‘Victorian Literature’ appeared in Good Words (38 (January 1897), pp. 91–5), a publication established in 1860 intended to provide appropriate reading for Sundays and directed at evangelicals and nonconformists, particularly of the lower middle class. Although it contained religious material it also published fiction and non-fiction articles suitable in tone.

The essay ‘Émile Zola’ was first published in the Fortnightly Review 31:184 (April 1882), pp. 439–52. It is Lang's longest and most substantial engagement with the work of Zola, though he writes frequently on him, see for example: ‘Romance and the Reverse’, this volume, pp. 112–114; ‘An Apology for M. Zola’, Illustrated London News 104:2864 (10 March 1894), p. 94; ‘M. Zola on Lourdes’, Illustrated London News 105:2893 (29 September 1894), p. 407 and on Zola's death, Longman's Magazine 41:241 (November 1902), p. 93. The essay shows the seriousness with which Lang considered Zola's work as well as further illustrating Lang's own position on the proper treatment of reality in novels.

‘The Supernatural in Fiction’, ‘Notes on Fiction’, and the two pieces from the Illustrated London News show Lang's ideas on the technique of writing and the difficulties of producing convincing effects in fiction. ‘The Supernatural in Fiction’ was published in Adventures Among Books (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1905), pp. 271–80.