The interval witnessed Iorga's brief affiliation with "Junimea", a literary club with conservative leanings, whose informal leader was literary and political theorist Titu Maiorescu. In 1890, literary critic Ștefan Vârgolici and cultural promoter Iacob Negruzzi published Iorga's essay on poet Veronica Micle in the "Junimist" tribune "Convorbiri Literare". Having earlier attended the funeral of writer Ion Creangă, a dissident "Junimist" and Romanian literature classic, he took a public stand against the defamation of another such figure, the dramatist Ion Luca Caragiale, groundlessly accused of plagiarism by journalist Constantin Al. Ionescu-Caion. He expanded his contribution as an opinion journalist, publishing with some regularity in various local or national periodicals of various leanings, from the socialist "Contemporanul" and "Era Nouă" to Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu's "Revista Nouă". This period saw his debut as a socialist poet (in "Contemporanul") and critic (in both "Lupta" and "Literatură și Știință").