Fiction and Drama

Drama

  • The Black Thief. A new and original drama (Adapted from the Irish) in four acts. (1882) [No scan available. The original is in the Lilly Library at Indiana University. See WorldCat.]
  • Pictures at Play or Dialogues of the Galleries (Longmans, 1888) with W. E. Henley (Available in the Lilly Library, Indiana University). See in WorldCat. [This illustrated dialog is not precisely a drama; but it is hard to categorize the work.] In Lang and Henley’s preface, they state, “It is familiar to all that the old portraits in old houses habitually come out of their frames at night, and walk and talk. Every one knows this who has ever read a Christmas Number. But it may be less generally credited that the people in the new pictures, in the Academy and other galleries, have also their play-time, stroll about, and exchanged their ideas about Art and Life. Their conversation has, this year, been overheard and set down in the following Dialogues by two Art-critics, who respectfully warn the young against literary collaboration. Each of us holds diametrically opposite opinions about Art. Each of us has the least flattering estimate of his colleague, and, if you will listen to A, B is a heavy-handed wag, while A (to B’s mind) is a frivolous pedant. But, if the Public will only bestow on the whole that approval which each of us thinks due to half of the work, and which both are ready to lend the designs of Mr. Harry Furniss, then this period (which is certainly rather unmanageable) will arrive at a happy conclusion.” Some of the portrait subjects who speak include W. E. Gladstone (who discusses Mary Augusta Ward’s Robert Elsemere with the Prince of Prussia), and Cardinal Manning.

Fairy Stories (Original)

Novels

Parodies

Short Stories

(Including some that, to my knowledge, may only have appeared in periodical form–there may be other uncollected magazine fiction that I have not yet uncovered.)

  • “A Duchess’s Secret.” Merry England, vol. 2, no. 9, Jan. 1884, pp. 178–187. British Periodicals. 
  • In the Wrong Paradise (Kegan Paul, 1886). A New York version is here. As noted in the book’s preface, “In Castle Perilous” and “A Cheap Nigger” were reprinted from the Cornhill, “The Romance of the First Radical” first appeared in Fraser’s, “In the Wrong Paradise” appeared in the Fortnightly Review, “My Friend the Beach-comber” appeared in Longman’s, “The Great Gladstone Myth” was from Macmillan’s, “A Duchess’s Secret” was in the Overland Mail, and “The End of Phæacia” appeared in Time. 
  • “In the Interests of Science: A Hypnotic Story.” The Illustrated London News, 20 June 1891, pp. 813–16. BNA. 
  • “The Wisest Aunt Telling the Saddest Tale,” in the English Illustrated Magazine, Oct. 1896, pp. 10–14, British Periodicals. Lang/the narrator claims at the end of the story, “Gentle reader,  . . .. All the story is true, except the explanation; except the detail of the Idiot Twin Brother! . . . . I can classify it (so, indeed, can Mr. Frederick Myers). I cannot explain it” (14).]
  • “Diary of a Scottish Antiquarian Discoverer.” [Fiction] Printers’ Pie: A Festival Souvenir of the Printers’ Pension, Almhouse and Orphan Asylum Corporation, 1904. Published at the Offices of The Sphere, London, 1904, pp. 75–78. Google Books. 

Translations

This page was last edited 26 Dec. 2025.