Little noted during his lifetime, Thomson's work continues to draw scant attention from students and critics. As a writer of verse. Thomson is tucked away under the category of minor poets of his age. His prose, including his literary criticism, is rarely read or consulted today. Yet Thomson offers much for the student of Victorian literature. Noted for his major poem, "The City of Dreadful Night," he is almost completely ignored as a literary critic essayist, and reviewer. While critics have paid due attention to his pessimism, atheism, and republicanism, little attention has been paid to the intellectual struggle which led him to these beliefs, a struggle which reflects an aspect of Victorian intellectual life too often neglected today. Because he went his solitary way with his unorthodox critical, political, and religious beliefs, Thomson is significant as a writer who gives a different view of his age. He...