Lang wrote numerous introductions to works concerned with fairy tales in the 1880s and 1890s, including introductions to William Adlington's translation of Apuleius, The Most Pleasant and Delectable Tale of the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche (London: Nutt, 1887), a reprint of the poem Beauty and the Beast attributed to Charles Lamb (London: Field and Tuer, 1887), Marian Roalfe Cox's groundbreaking work of tale-type analysis Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-Five Variants (London: Nutt, 1893), and K. Langloh Parker's Australian Legendary Tales (London: Nutt, 1895) and More Australian Legendary Tales (London: Nutt, 1898). The following pieces are taken from two introductions by Lang that examine the uses of popular tradition as a basis for the creation of literary fictions. The first is Lang's introduction to Clara Bell's 1895 translation of the allegorical children's adventure story De kleine Johannes by the Dutch psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden (1860–1932) (Little Johannes, London: William Heinemann, 1885). It is especially interesting as an account of Lang's approach to ‘the history of the Fairy Tale in modern literature’, though, as so often with Lang's introductions, he has very little to say about the work in hand, and instead uses the opportunity of the introduction to pursue his own concerns. The second set of extracts is taken from Lang's introduction to his own 1888 edition of Charles Perrault's Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé, avec des Moralitéz (Stories or Tales of Times Passed, with Morals) and Contes en vers (Tales in Verse), published as Perrault's Popular Tales (Oxford, Clarendon, 1888). This introduction, substantial enough to be reckoned a book-length critical study in its own right, includes a biography of Perrault, an account of the courtly context in which the tales were written, and essays on each of Perrault's prose tales, complete with detailed comparative data about each narrative type. The selection here includes Lang's account of the appearance of the tales, and his comparative analysis of the story ‘Puss in Boots’ (ATU545) and its variants. Also included is Lang's brief conclusion, in which he offers a concise summary of existing theories concerning narrative transmission, states his objections to these theories, and formulates his own views on the problem.