Urban Gothic and Anthropocenic Darkness in James Thomson (‘B.V’.)’s "The City of Dreadful Night"

James Thomson’s The City of Dreadful Night (1874) has been interpreted through multiple critical lenses. Scholars have variously examined it as a vision of psycho-geographic horror, an example of Urban Gothic, a pre-Modernist Waste Land, a Dantesque allegory of the human condition, a metaphor for London, and a reflection of the poet’s unconscious fears, insomniac nights, and existential despair. This essay offers a fresh perspective on this masterpiece, reconsidering these interpretations through the lens of contemporary debates on the Anthropocene and environmental anxieties. In this reading, Thomson’s nocturnal city becomes an eerily prescient image of a world ravaged by human greed, anthropocentric exploitation, and ecological indifference, while its inhabitants embody a stoic resistance to the moral failures of modern civilization. Ultimately, this chapter argues that Thomson’s vision remains strikingly relevant today, exposing the persistent disregard for environmental and social justice — both human and more-than-human. Yet, even within this overwhelming darkness, his work may offer a faint but significant glimmer of consolation.