Aet. 44, to Frank Harris, editor of the Saturday Review. In response to George Moore’s article about distinguishing traits of prose narrative, Andrew Lang argued that literature was a product of environment rather than nationality or ethnicity and supposed that if George had ever read Henry Fielding (a target of criticism in the article), the experience must have been forgotten.
Lang went fishing again in Cosmopolis (November 1898), where he labelled Evelyn Innes an “unconscious joke,” reminding him of Huysmans’ En Route (1895), “which makes an Englishman ill.”
This letter was reprinted by R.L. Green in Andrew Lang (Leicester: Edmund Ward, 1946, pages 193-194), noting that Lang’s favorite pastime actually was fishing (his Angling Sketches appeared in 1891).
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