This section shows Lang's position in the world of reviewing and criticism of the late nineteenth century and illustrates his own views of some of the topics of the time. ‘Poetry and Politics’ was first published in Macmillan's Magazine 53:314 (December 1885), pp. 81–8 in response to William John Courthope's book The Liberal Movement in English Literature (London: John Murray, 1885). Courthope and Lang were contemporaries with similar careers: both studied Classics at Oxford, published poetry and were part of the journal culture of the 1880s and 1890s. Courthope also wrote on literature and history, contributing to many of the same journals as Lang, including Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Courthope became editor (with Alfred Austin) of the explicitly politically conservative National Review in 1883, and upon his appointment to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford in 1895 Lang harshly criticised the first volume of Courthope's book History of English Poetry, see ‘At the Sign of the Ship’, Longman's Magazine 26:155 (September 1895), pp. 541–50. Lang states again his views on writers, critics and politics in ‘Politics and Men of Letters’, first published in The Pilot (21 April 1900), pp. 220–1.

Plagiarism was another contentious topic and Lang's article ‘Literary Plagiarism’ was published in Contemporary Review 51 (June 1887), pp. 835– 40. The context of the article is Lang's defence of Henry Rider Haggard. Haggard had published an attack on Realism, ‘About Fiction’ in the Critical Review in February 1887, upon which the influential journalist W. T. Stead, writing in the Pall Mall Gazette (11 March 1887), accused Haggard of pla giarising his novels, and Lang and Haggard of the offence of ‘log-rolling’, meaning the mutual public promotion of each other's work. Lang's ‘At the Sign of the Ship’ column at this time also contains discussion of both plagiarism and ‘log-rolling’, for example in Longman's Magazine 9:50 (December 1886), pp. 216–20. The popular novelist Marie Corelli, supported by Stead, was also vociferous on the issue and the character of the powerful reviewer David McWhing in her novel The Sorrows of Satan (London: Methuen, 1895) is at least partly modelled on Lang.