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BOOK REVIEWS publisher, Bertram Dobell, wUling to risk producing his book as The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems (1880). It was exceedingly well received, seUing briskly and even meriting an enthusiastic review Ui Bradlaugh's National Reformer. One Uterary critic pronounced that "Not since... Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Morris startled the reading world has any volume [of verse] caUed forth more decided and sterling praise . . ." and haüed The longest piece Ui the book, The City of Dreadful Night' . . . [as] ... an allegorical representation of the misery and hopelessness of human ltfe." During the previous year, Thomson had been increasingly plagued by recurring Ulness and was unable to control his drinking. Dobell and other friends tried hard to help him and finally concluded that "the only way to stop his drinking was to lock him up." Virtually penniless, Thomson collapsed following a nightmarish month-long bulge and died m a casualty ward m London on 7 June 1882. Tom Leonard deserves much gratitude for resurrecting the memory and merit of Thomson's work. Quite appropriately, Leonard completed this biography Ui the British Library, where Thomson spent so much tune writing his verse, and, after listing Thomson's major verse and prose creations, Leonard concludes this weU-written study with the statement, "Look at them. What ltfe needs exoneration with these?" J. O. Baylen, Emeritus Eastborne, England I Books Received I Andrews, Malcolm. Dickens and the Grown- Up Child. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994. ix + 214 pp. $29.95 Barthélémy, Anthony Gerard, ed. Critical Essays on Shakespeare's 'Othello'. New York: G. K. Hall, 1994. ix + 243pp. $45.00 Bérubé, Michael. Public Access: Literary Theory and American Cultural Politics. New York: Verso, 1994. xii + 272 pp. Cloth $64.95 Paper $18.95 Burnley, David. A Guide to Chaucer's Language. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. xv + 264 pp. Paper $14.95 Crossley, Robert. Oto/ Stapledon: Speaking for the Future. Foreword by Brian W. Al diss. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1994. 494 pp $39.95 DiMatteo, Anthony. Natale Conti's 'Mythologies': A Select Transfation. New York: Garland, 1994. xxxiv + 400 pp. $97.00 The English Faust Book. John Henry Jones, ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. xv + 279 pp. $80.00 147 ...

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