The City of Dreadful Night is a long poem by the Scottish poet James "B.V." Thomson, written between 1870 and 1873, and published in the National Reformer in 1874, [1] then, in 1880, in a book entitled The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems. [2] The poem is noted for the pessimistic philosophy that it expresses. [3] It has been argued that the city described in the poem is based on London. [4]
The poem, despite its insistently bleak tone, won the praise of George Meredith and of George Saintsbury, who in A History of Nineteenth-Century Literature wrote that "what saves Thomson is the perfection with which he expresses the negative and hopeless side of the sense of mystery." [5]
The City of Dreadful Night is a long poem by the Scottish poet James "B.V." Thomson, written between 1870 and 1873, and published in the National Reformer in 1874, [1] then, in 1880, in a book entitled The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems. [2] The poem is noted for the pessimistic philosophy that it expresses. [3] It has been argued that the city described in the poem is based on London. [4]
The poem, despite its insistently bleak tone, won the praise of George Meredith and of George Saintsbury, who in A History of Nineteenth-Century Literature wrote that "what saves Thomson is the perfection with which he expresses the negative and hopeless side of the sense of mystery." [5]