James Thomson (poet, born 1834)

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For the 18th-century poet of the same name, see James Thomson (poet, born 1700). For the weaver poet of the same name, see James Thomson (weaver poet). For other people with the same name, see James Thomson.

James Thomson
Royal Military Asylum
Period1863–1882
Notable worksThe City of Dreadful Night
Signature

James Thomson (23 November 1834 – 3 June 1882), who wrote under the pen name Bysshe Vanolis, was a Scottish journalist, poet, and translator. He is most often remembered for The City of Dreadful Night (1874; 1880), a poetic allegory of urban suffering and despair. Thomson's pen name derives from the names of the poets Shelley and Novalis; both strong influences on him as a writer.[1] 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.[2] In the title of his biography of Thomson, Bertram Dobell dubbed him "the Laureate of Pessimism".[3][4][5]

Life

Thomson was born in

Royal Caledonian Asylum
on Chalk Road (later Caledonian Road after the asylum) near Holloway. At around this time, his mother died.

He was trained as an

atheist pamphlet a year earlier.[6]

More than a decade later, Thomson quit the military and moved to London, where he worked as a clerk. He remained in communication with Bradlaugh, who was by now issuing his own weekly National Reformer, a "publication for the working man". For the remaining 19 years of his life, starting in 1863, Thomson submitted stories, essays and poems to the National Reformer and other periodicals. From 1866 onwards he lived in a single room, first in Pimlico and then in Bloomsbury.

Thomson's most famous literary work, the poem The City of Dreadful Night, was composed from January 1870 to October 1873.[7] It was first published in serial form in the National Reformer in the spring of 1874. The poem was reprinted in The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems (1880) and elicited encouraging and complimentary reviews from a number of critics.

Thomson died in London at the age of 47, from a broken blood vessel in his bowel,[8][9] and was buried in the east side of Highgate Cemetery in the grave of his friend, the freethinker, Austin Holyoake. The inscription on his grave states that he was born in 1831, not 1834.

Legacy

In 1889, seven years after Thomson's death, Henry Stephens Salt published the first biography of Thomson, with a selection of writings, The Life of James Thomson ("B.V.").[1] In 1910, Bertram Dobell published a second biography, The Laureate of Pessimism: a Sketch of the Life of James Thomson.[5] In 1993, Tom Leonard's biographical study Places of the Mind: The Life and Work of James Thomson ('B. V.') of Thomson was published by the London publisher Jonathan Cape.[10] In recent years, Thomson's poems have rarely been anthologised, although the autobiographical "Insomnia" and "Sunday at Hampstead" have been well-regarded and include some striking passages.

Selected publications

Gallery

  • Sketch portrait of Thomson
    Sketch portrait of Thomson
  • Portrait, taken in 1869
    Portrait, taken in 1869
  • James Thomson, photo portrait, c. 1881
    James Thomson, photo portrait, c. 1881
  • Thomson's grave in Highgate Cemetery
    Thomson's grave in Highgate Cemetery

References

  1. ^ a b "James Thomson ('B.V.')". Henry S. Salt Society. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  2. ISBN 978-3-11-165603-8
    .
  3. ^ Tikkanen, Amy. "James Thomson | Scottish poet [1834–1882]". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  4. ISBN 978-3-319-60738-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link
    )
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-1-137-60219-0
  6. ISBN 978-0-618-49337-1
    .
  7. ^ Schaefer, William David (1965). James Thomson, B.V., beyond "The city." --. Internet Archive. Berkeley : University of California Press.
  8. ^ Imlah, Mick (14 February 1993). "BOOK REVIEW / Sad days in the City of Dreadful Night: 'Places of the Mind: The Life and Work of James Thomson ('B V') – Tom Leonard: Cape, 25 pounds". The Independent. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  9. ^ Saintsbury, George (1906). A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780–1895). London: The Macmillan Company. p. 297.
  10. OCLC 953042819.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  11. ^ Thomson, James (1963). Poems and Some Letters. Southern Illinois University Press.

Attribution:

Further reading

External links

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