The City of Dreadful Night explained

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, Rudyard Kipling 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]

References

1. Web site: "Poison Mixed With Gall": James Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night – A Personal View . Sullivan . Dick . 2008-09-29.
2. Book: Thomson, James. The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems. Reeves and Turner. 1880. London.
3. Salt. Henry S.. August 1896. Among the Authors: The Poet of Pessimism. The Vegetarian Review. 360–362.
4. Web site: The Importance of Being London: Looking for Signs of the Metropolis in James Thomson's City of Dreadful Night. Cheng. Chu-chueh. Literary London Society. 2020-05-22.
5. Book: Saintsbury, George. A History of Nineteenth-Century Literature (1780–1895). The Macmillan Company. 1906. London. 298. en.