James Thomson (Scottish writer, 1834-1882) Add a review

James Thomson (23 November 1834 – 3 June 1882) — pen name Bysshe Vanolis — was a Scottish journalist, poet, and translator. He is remembered for The City of Dreadful Night (1874; 1880), 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".