Born: September 11, 1700 Died: August 27, 1748
James Thomson (1700–1748) was a Scottish poet best known for writing The Seasons—a poetic cycle that somehow made meteorology sound dramatic. Born in the small border town of Ednam, Thomson was a minister’s son who traded sermons for stanzas and ended up becoming one of the earliest poets to romanticize the natural world in a big way, paving the way for the likes of Wordsworth and Coleridge.
After studying at the University of Edinburgh (because what else was a poetic Presbyterian supposed to do?), he moved to London with high hopes and an even higher stack of verse. There, he found modest fame, an enthusiastic publisher, and some well-heeled patrons who appreciated his odes to fog, frost, and the occasional thunderclap.
While The Seasons is his magnum opus, spanning over 5,500 lines about the weather—yes, really—it wasn’t all clouds and crocuses. Thomson also penned Rule, Britannia! which later became a rousing anthem of British nationalism, beloved by redcoats and royalists alike.
His poetic style is lush, verbose, and drenched in personification—think Nature as a moody Instagram model. He practically invented the “walk-in-the-woods-and-feel-feelings” genre that later Romantics would run wild with.
He died at 47, probably from a cold—ironic, given how much he wrote about them.
