The growth of a ‘reading public’ in the latter decades of the nineteenth century produced much debate about the proper form and content of novels and the value of popular fiction. The growth in the reading public was partly prompted by the 1870 Elementary Education Act, which raised levels of literacy in the working classes. The moral effect of novels on middle-class women had long been a concern and this now extended to the working class. Lang was often accused by his contemporaries (and since) of encouraging an appetite for low-quality genre fiction and dismissing important and more challenging work, such as that of Henry James, Thomas Hardy and particularly Émile Zola. ‘Realism and Romance’ was first published in the Contemporary Review 52 (November 1887), pp. 683–93 and is the best-known of Lang's articles on fiction and his strongest statement in the debate. ‘Literary Anodynes’, first published in the New Princeton Review, 6:2 (September 1888), pp. 145–53, and ‘Romance and the Reverse’, first published in St. James's Gazette (7 November 1888), pp. 3–4, both continue the discussion of romance and participate in the more general debate on the nature of fiction being conducted on both sides of the Atlantic during the 1880s and 1890s (see also section 1 this volume, Critics and Criticism’. pp. 54–89). ‘The Evolution of Literary Decency’ was first published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 167:1013 (March 1900), pp. 363–70 and shows Lang's position on the question of morality in literature.

The voice of one member of the reading public is heard in the article co-published by Lang and ‘X’ entitled ‘The Reading Public’ (Cornhill Magazine 11:66 (December 1902), pp.783–95). The name of X is not known and the article is not co-written, as Lang only introduces and concludes X's piece, but the collaboration came out of correspondence that had arisen after X wrote to Lang in 1901 in appreciation of his work. X was a factory worker in Birmingham and when, after some years of correspondence, X lost his job, Lang assisted him fi nancially by paying for small writing jobs and eventually helped him fi nd a place as a proof corrector.