THOMSON, JAMES. - English poet, b. at Port Glasgow on 23 Nov. 1834, d. in London on 3 June 1882.
He suffered poverty, especially in childhood, and experienced other misfortunes, among them the death of a girl he loved. In life he was a free-thinking anarchist given to alcohol. He is known for a poem pervaded by a pessimism more despairing and nihilistic than Leopardi's and inspired by the conviction of the uselessness of existence: The city of dreadful night, in which he sings of an imaginary city inhabited by the castaways of life and hope. The poem is uneven but in some verses powerful. T. signed himself B. V., that is B. for Bysshe (Shelley) and V. for Vanolis, an anagram of Novalis, two of the poets he most favored.
Bibliography2 worksB. Evans, English poetry in the later nineteenth century, London 1933, ch. 9; L. A. Cotten, Leopardi and The city of dreadful night, in Stud
BIBL.: B. Evans, English poetry in the later nineteenth century, London 1933, ch. 9; L. A. Cotten, Leopardi and The city of dreadful night, in Studies in philology, 42 (1945), pp. 675-689.
Guidi, Augusto. “Thomson, james.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. XII, col. 62. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1954. https://azioneromana.com/article/thomson-james-2.
MLA
Guidi, Augusto. “Thomson, james.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. XII, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1954, col. 62. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/thomson-james-2.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec12_thomson_james_2,
author = {Guidi, Augusto},
title = {Thomson, james},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {XII},
pages = {62},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1954},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/thomson-james-2}
}
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