The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Selected Writings of Andrew Lang Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- General Introduction
- Introduction to Volume 2
- Chronology of the Life and Major Works of Andrew Lang
- A Note on the Text
- Acknowledgements
- I CRITICS AND CRITICISM
- 2 REALISM, ROMANCE AND THE READING PUBLIC
- 3 ON WRITERS AND WRITING
- 4 SCOTLAND, HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY
- 5 THE BUSINESS AND INSTITUTIONS OF LITERARY LIFE
- APPENDIX: Names Frequently Cited By Lang
- Explanatory Notes
- Index
General Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- General Introduction
- Introduction to Volume 2
- Chronology of the Life and Major Works of Andrew Lang
- A Note on the Text
- Acknowledgements
- I CRITICS AND CRITICISM
- 2 REALISM, ROMANCE AND THE READING PUBLIC
- 3 ON WRITERS AND WRITING
- 4 SCOTLAND, HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY
- 5 THE BUSINESS AND INSTITUTIONS OF LITERARY LIFE
- APPENDIX: Names Frequently Cited By Lang
- Explanatory Notes
- Index
Summary
When Andrew Lang died in 1912, and for some time after, even the most sympathetic commentators remarked on the disappointment inherent in his now completed oeuvre. The most scathing was Henry James, writing to Edmund Gosse in November 1912:
Where I can't but feel he should be brought to justice is in the matter of his whole ‘give-away’ of the wonderful chance he so continually enjoyed (enjoyed thanks to certain of his very gifts, I admit!) give-away, I mean by his cultivation, absolutely, of the puerile imagination and fourth-rate opinion, the coming round to that of the old apple-woman on the corner as after all the good and the right as to any of the mysteries of mind or of art.
Both were publically more generous to Lang, as were the many obituaries and commemorative writings, but in introducing the published versions of the first ten years of the Andrew Lang Lectures, Adam Blyth Webster, Professor of English Literature at St Andrews, admits that:
Through much, through most, of what had been written about him there ran the admission that he had done many things gracefully and some exceedingly well, but also the wonder, regretful or complaining, not that he should have done so much but that, it seemed, he had failed to do more.
For many, though, it was not so much that they wished Lang had done more, rather that he had done less, and concerned himself with just one area; usually, for each commentator, the area that most concerned themselves. His friend George Saintsbury wrote of Lang's ability:
It may be that in one way it did not concentrate itself enough—did not leave two or three big books instead of thirty or forty little ones; and in another concentrated itself too much by writing not very small books on subjects which might have been adequately treated in not very long essays.
Saintsbury concluded his assessment:
‘Selections’, of course, suggest themselves and have been suggested. It would be possible to conceive not merely one but more than one which would supply reading of the most refreshing kind. But it would be an extraordinarily difficult job; and while selections often fail to satisfy their readers, this selection would be so unlikely to satisfy the selector that he would probably never get it finished.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Selected Writings of Andrew LangLiterary Criticism, History, Biography, pp. 9 - 16Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015