In addition to his work in logic, MacColl also wrote and published a short story, a poem, and several novels as well as works that one today would refer to as ‘cultural criticism’. All of these works were concerned with two of the most central themes of the Victorian period, the growth and increasing influence of science and the decline of religion. Just as his work in logic has been ignored, until very recently, so no attention has been paid either to his literary works nor to his works of ‘cultural criticism’. This paper discusses why so little attention has been given to these works in spite of MacColl’s obvious intellectual talents. An explanation for this neglect can be found both in the way in which MacColl handles these themes and in his outsider position. MacColl was not only an expatriate living in a French provincial town without any contact with the metropolitan literary and cultural environment of London. He was also in a very real sense a mid-Victorian who produced his works in the late Victorian and Edwardian period when the focus of the debate about science and religion had changed.