Andrew Lang

Letters to Dead Authors (1886) Andrew Lang

Letters to Dead Authors contains twenty-two letters written by Andrew Lang (1844-1912) to bards, poets, and novelists from Homer to Rabelais to Austen. An incredibly prolific writer from the Scottish Borders, Lang's name can be found on 249 books and thousands of newspaper articles. As a literary critic he inspired love, fear, respect, and laughter. He was sometimes acerbic, sometimes reverential, and usually witty. There is more glowing praise in Letters to Dead Authors than scathing criticism. In fact he expresses a very, very high opinion of most of his correspondents. While this can verge on cloying, it can also be rather beautiful. For example, to Percy Bysshe Shelley he writes: "Watching the yellow bees in the ivy bloom, and the reflected pine forest in the water-pools, watching the sunset as it faded, and the dawn as it fired, and weaving all fair and fleeting things into a tissue where light and music were at one, that was the task of Shelley! 'To ask you for anything human, ' you said, 'was like asking for a leg of mutton at a gin-shop.'.."............. Andrew Lang, FBA (31 March 1844 - 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him. BiographyLang was born in Selkirk. He was the eldest of the eight children born to John Lang, the town clerk of Selkirk, and his wife Jane Plenderleath Sellar, who was the daughter of Patrick Sellar, factor to the first duke of Sutherland. On 17 April 1875, he married Leonora Blanche Alleyne, youngest daughter of C. T. Alleyne of Clifton and Barbados. She was (or should have been) variously credited as author, collaborator, or translator of Lang's Color/Rainbow Fairy Books which he edited. He was educated at Selkirk Grammar School, Loretto, and at the Edinburgh Academy, St Andrews University and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a first class in the final classical schools in 1868, becoming a fellow and subsequently honorary fellow of Merton College. He soon made a reputation as one of the most able and versatile writers of the day as a journalist, poet, critic, and historian. In 1906, he was elected FBA. He died of angina pectoris at the Tor-na-Coille Hotel in Banchory, Banchory, survived by his wife. He was buried in the cathedral precincts at St Andrews, where a monument can be visited in the south-east corner of the 19th century section