LANG, ANDREW (1844-191 )2,, Scottish scholar and man of letters, was born at Selkirk on March 31, 1844. He was edu cated at Selkirk Grammar school, Edinburgh academy, the Uni versity of St. Andrews and Balliol college, Oxford. He held a fellowship of Merton until he married in 1875, when he remoyed to London. Lang was one of the greatest journalists of his time, always fresh and original, and writing from a mind overflowing with all kinds of out-of-the-way knowledge. He wrote leaders for the Daily News, literary and critical articles for the Morning Post and other papers; he also wrote articles on ballads, crystal gazing, poltergeist, totemism and many other questions for the 9th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
He was keenly interested in Scottish history, especially in the history of the Stuarts; it would be almost fair to call him the last of the Jacobites. He had a passion for unravelling mysterious intrigues and Scottish history gave him plenty of opportunities. Among his works in this field were The Mystery of Mary Stuart (1901 ; rev. ed. 1904) ; The Portraits and Jewels of Mary Stuart (1906) ; John Knox and the Reformation (1905); Pickle the Spy (1897) ; a History of Scotland from the Roman Occupation to the Suppression of the last Jacobite Rising (4 vols., 1900-07), a work containing many entertaining digressions; and other monographs on Scottish questions. He also took a keen interest in French history; he wrote a book on the "Man in the Iron Mask," which he called The Valet's Tragedy (1903), and a counterblast to Anatole France's work on Joan of Arc in The Maid of France (1908).
Lang was an incurable romantic, and this is one of the reasons for his great success in writing for children. Generations of them were delighted with the long series of fairy books, beginning with the Blue Fairy Tale Book (1889), and going on with the Red, the Green and the Yellow, and then with true stories equally en chanting. Lang's first ambition had been towards poetry. He published many pleasant volumes of verse, beginning with the Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), in which he experi mented in various metres. He was disappointed by the reception of his narrative poem on Helen of Troy (1882). His serious Homeric studies bore fruit in his collaboration with S. H. Butcher in a prose translation (1879) of the Odyssey, and with E. Myers and Walter Leaf in a prose version of the Iliad (1883). Of his separate books on classical subjects the best is The World of Homer ( 910) .
Lang's other main preoccupation was with myth and folklore. He made solid contributions to the subject in his Custom and Myth (1884) ; Myth, Literature and Religion (2 vols., 1887 ; rev. ed., 1899) ; The Making of Religion (1898). Many academic honours were conferred on him. His biographer (G. S. Gordon) in the Dictionary of National Biography calls him the "greatest bookman of his age." He died at Banchory, Aberdeenshire, on July 20, 1912.