1844–1912, English scholar and man of letters, b. Scotland. His poetry, much of it written in the forms of ballades, triolets, and rondeaux, appeared in such volumes as his Ballads in Blue China (2 vol., 1880–81). Lang was one of the first to apply anthropological findings to the study of myth and folklore; his best work in this field was Myth, Literature, and Religion (1887, rev. ed. 1899). He is known for his prose translations of the Odyssey (with S. H. Butcher, 1879), and the Iliad (with Walter Leaf and Ernest Myers, 1883), and for his defense of the unity of Homer in The World of Homer (1910). With his wife, Leonora Blanche Lang, he translated and adapted traditional stories for children, published in his Blue Fairy Book (1889) and others. Lang also wrote literary and art criticism, a biography of J. G. Lockhart (1896), and several works on Scottish history, culminating in his History of Scotland (4 vol., 1900–1907). His poetical works were edited (1923) by his wife.

See biography by R. L. Green (1946, repr. 1973).

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