Further Reading
- Barrell, John, The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place, 1730-1840: An Approach to the Poetry of John Clare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972, 244 p. (Discusses the influence of Italian landscape painting on Thomson's poetic technique, as well as Thomson's impact on the poetry of Clare.)
- Brown, Marshall, "The Urbane Sublime: Formal Balance in Thomson and Collins," in Preromanticism, pp. 29-34. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991. (Offers an analysis of the style of eighteenth-century sublime poetry exemplified by The Seasons and William Collins's Odes.)
- Bush, Douglas, "Newtonianism, Rationalism, and Sentimentalism," in Science and English Poetry: A Historical Sketch, 1590-1950, pp. 51-78. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950. (Includes comments on the Newtonian inspiration of Thomson's poetry of nature. Contends that Thomson, like Newton, viewed God as immanent in all creation.)
- Campbell, Hilbert H., James Thomson. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979, 175 p. (Introductory biographical and critical study. Campbell traces the life and major works of Thomson, and examines his reputation and influence.)
- Cohen, Ralph, The Art of Discrimination: Thomson's The Seasons and the Language of Criticism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964, 529 p. (An examination of the literary criticism generated in response to The Seasons over two centuries.)
- Cohen, Ralph, The Unfolding of The Seasons. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970, 338 p. (An important study that systematically examines the poetry of The Seasons, focusing on Thomson's unified vision of man's place in an ever-changing environment.)
- Courthope, W. J., "Philosophical English Poetry in the Eighteenth Century: Influence of Deism, Nature-Worship, Liberty, and the Arts," in A History of English Poetry, Vol. V, pp. 272-326. London: Macmillan, 1905. (Includes a concise overview of Thomson's life and works, with critical commentary on The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence.)
- Gosse, Edmund, "The Dawn of Naturalism in Poetry," in A History of Eighteenth-Century Literature, pp. 207-41. New York: Macmillan Co. (Contains a succinct biographical and critical survey of Thomson's life and career.)
- Grant, Douglas, James Thomson, Poet of The Seasons. London: Cresset Press, 1951, 308 p. (Considered the standard biography of Thomson; includes lengthy commentaries on The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence.)
- Irlam, Shaun, "Gerrymandered Geographies: Exoticism in Thomson and Chateaubriand," MLN 108, No. 4 (September 1993): 891-912. (A postcolonial analysis of The Seasons which uses Thomson's poem to consider eighteenth-century, European notions of nationhood and imperialism.)
- Kenshur, Oscar, Open Form and the Shape of Ideas: Literary Structures as Representations of Philosophical Concepts in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1986, 140 p. (A theoretical analysis that relates Thomson's form in The Seasons to specific philosophies of knowledge and divinity.)
- McKillop, Alan Dugald, The Background of Thomson's "Seasons". Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1942, 191 p. (Discusses the philosophical, literary, scientific, and geographical underpinnings of The Seasons.)
- Nicolson, Marjorie Hope, "Aesthetic Implications of the Opticks," in Newton Demands the Muse: Newton's "Opticks" and the Eighteenth Century Poets, pp. 107-17. Hamden, Conn., and London: Archon Books, 1963. (Places Thomson at the forefront of new aesthetic approaches to the depiction of color and light in poetry.)
- Sambrook, James, James Thomson, 1700-1748: A Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, 332 p. (A biographical study of the author's life and works with an emphasis on his social and political context.)
- Scott, Mary Jane W., James Thomson, Anglo-Scot. Athens, Ga., and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1988, 373 p. (A biography that attempts to account for "the distinctive influences which the poet's Scottish background had upon his work.")
- Spacks, Patricia Meyer, "James Thomson: The Retreat from Vision," in The Poetry of Vision: Five Eighteenth-Century Poets, pp. 46-65. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. (Detailed analysis of the role of emotion in The Castle of Indolence. According to Spacks, Thomson demonstrates both the appeal of his sensual verse and its ultimate danger.)
- Spencer, Jeffry B., "James Thomson and Ideal Landscape: The Triumph of Pictorialism," in Heroic Nature: Ideal Landscape in English Poetry from Marvell to Thomson, pp. 253-95. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973. (Examines the ways in which the descriptive technique of The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence stems from Thomson's considerable appreciation of the visual arts.)
- Stephen, Sir Leslie, "Thomson," in History of the English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. II, pp. 360-62. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1876. (Includes a discussion of the intellectual background of Thomson's poetry; posits that Thomson, despite his emotional response to nature, assumed an intellectual attitude, viewing it as the ultimate argument against atheism.)
- Stormer, Phillip Ronald, "Holding 'High Converse with the Mighty Dead': Morality and Politics in James Thomson's Winter," English Language Notes XXIX, No. 3 (March 1992): 27-40. (An in-depth, focused examination of a single key passage in Winter. Closely examines Thomson's revisions in one passage of "Winter" and concludes that "each version becomes a more cohesive whole, thematically stronger.")
- Thompson, Francis, "James Thomson," The Academy n.s. 51, No. 1302 (April 17, 1897): 417. (Denigrates Thomson as a poet whose name "stands for little or nothing" and is preserved only because of its frequent association with John Milton and William Wordsworth.)
- Walker, Imogene B., James Thomson (B.V.): A Critical Study. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950, 212 p. (One of the standard biocritical studies.)
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