In the following excerpt from her full-length study of Young, Bliss summarizes and analyzes Young's Night Thoughts, and Conjectures on Original Composition.

In the following essay Barfoot examines Utopian themes and images in Young's Night Thoughts.

In the following essay Wanko describes critical reception of Young's works and argues that his critical reputation has suffered because of the development of a literary taxonomy into which he does not neatly fit.

Below, Odell explores the ways in which "Young fully adopts the theory of divine poetry inherited from the preceding centuries and modified for the eighteenth century."

In the following excerpt Cornford analyzes several themes in, and contexts for, Young's Night Thoughts.

In the following excerpt from her full-length study of the "aesthetics of the infinite" Nicolson discusses eighteenth-century concepts of the sublime and identifies Young as a perfect example of a poet of the sublime.

In the following excerpt from his study of Preromanticism, Brown gives an overview of Young, focusing on his Night Thoughts and locating him in the literary tradition.

In the following excerpt from his commentary on Young's Night Thoughts, Melmoth discusses the style, imagery, and language of the "Ninth Night"—writing in the form of a letter to his friend Archibald.

Here, Mitford comments on Young's satires, Original Composition, and several other works, noting that the Night Thoughts show "fertility of thought and luxuriance of imagination"