
Places of the Mind by Tom Leonard
The poet James Thomson (1834-82) was author of the pessimistic masterpiece THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT, which Herman Melville described as 'a modern Book of Job'. Born into a millenialist family, reared in a London Scottish orphanage, Thomson was an early member of the Corps of Army Schoolmasters. Expelled from the Army for insubordination, he wrote for the weekly freethought NATIONAL REFORMER where he published pioneering translations of Leopardi, versions of Heine, prose satires on church affairs and biting criticism of the narrowness of contemporary British Literature. He early championed Browning and Meredith, made the study of Shelley his life's work, and in his own poetry presented as no other has done in English the alienation of the isolated and displaced in industrial society. An outsider on the Bloomsbury scene around W M Rossetti, Thomson died homeless and in poverty in 1882.
Tom Leonard shared the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year Award in 1984 for his collection Intimate Voices, and his innovative 1990 anthology Radical Renfrew was described in the Glasgow Herald as 'the most significant event in Scottish poetry for a very long time.'
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780224031189 |
| ISBN 10 | 022403118X |
| Title | Places of the Mind |
| Author | Tom Leonard |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 1993-02-11 |
| Number of pages | 432 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |