James Thomson, who wrote under the pseudonym Bysshe Vanolis, was a Scottish Victorian era poet famous primarily for the long poem &quot;The City of Dreadful Night&quot;, first published in 1874, an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment.&nbsp;<br />He struggled with depression, insomnia and alcohol-abuse throughout his short life and his work frequently reflected the bleakness and despair of his life&rsquo;s experiences.<br />Raymond Williams calls &quot;The City of Dreadful Night&quot;: &lsquo;a symbolic vision of the city as a condition of human life&rsquo;. Williams asserts that, by the Victorian-era, the city had become a new form of human consciousness. The city of Thomson&rsquo;s poem is clearly an imagined London. But it is not the dynamic hub of Empire of the popular imagination: for him it is a city of death in life. &nbsp;A place permeated by loss of belief, loss of purpose and loss of hope.