The Complete Poems

Book excerpt: James Thomson (1834-1882), who often signed his work with the pseudonym "B. V.," ranks among the greatest of the Victorian poets, and his magnum opus "The City of Dreadful Night" exerted a powerful impact on modern poetry of the Twentieth Century. For the first time in print, his entire body of work now appears as the poet left it upon his untimely death at the age of 47. The three books of verse which Thomson prepared for publication stand in their entirety, and his uncollected poems are arranged in chronological order. The volume concludes with the verse translations found in Thomson's essays, many of which were omitted from previous editions. Here at last, in one lovingly edited volume, is the work of the Victorian era's most neglected and yet most resonant voice---James Thomson.