James Thomson

1834 - 1882

James ThomsonJames Thomson, who wrote under the name Bysshe Vanolis, was a Scottish journalist, poet, and translator. He is remembered for The City of Dreadful Night, a poetic allegory of urban suffering and despair. His pen name derives from the names of the poets Shelley and Novalis; both strong influences on him as a writer. Thomson's essays were written mainly for National Reformer, Secular Review, and Cope's Tobacco Plant. His longer poems include "The Doom of a City" (1854) in four parts, "Vane's Story" (1865), and the Orientalist ballad "Weddah and Om-El-Bonain". He admired and translated the works of the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi and Heinrich Heine. In the title of his biography of Thomson, Bertram Dobell dubbed him "the Laureate of Pessimism".

Poems