James Thomson, who wrote under the pseudonymBysshe Vanolis, was a Scottish Victorian era poet famous primarily for the long poemThe City of Dreadful Night, an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment. Thomson's pseudonym derives from the names of the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Novalis. He is often distinguished from the earlier Scottish poet James Thomson by the letters B.V. after his name. Thomson's poems rarely appear in modern anthologies, although the autobiographical "Insomnia" and "Mater Tenebrarum" are well-regarded and contain some striking passages. He admired and translated the works of the pessimistic Italian poetGiacomo Leopardi, but his pessimism is considered to have been stronger than that of Leopardi. He is regarded as one of the bleakest Victorian poets.
Life
Thomson was born in Port Glasgow, Scotland, and, at the age of eight, he was sent to London where he was raised in an orphanage, the Royal Caledonian Asylum on Chalk Road near Holloway. Soon after this his mother died. He spoke with a London accent. He trained as an army schoolmaster at the Royal Military Asylum in Chelsea and served in Ireland, where in 1851, at the age of 17, he made the acquaintance of the 18-year-old Charles Bradlaugh, who was already notorious as a freethinker, having published his first atheist pamphlet a year earlier. More than a decade later, Thomson left the military and moved to London, where he worked as a clerk. He remained in contact 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 various publications, including the National Reformer, which published the sombre poem which remains his most famous work. The City of Dreadful Night came about from the struggle with insomnia, alcoholism and chronic depression which plagued Thomson's final decade. Increasingly isolated from friends and society in general, he even became hostile towards Bradlaugh. In 1880, nineteen months before his death, the publication of his volume of poetry, The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems elicited encouraging and complimentary reviews from a number of critics, but came too late to prevent Thomson's downward slide. He died, in London, at the age of 47, from a broken blood vessel in his bowel.
