Thompson did not pursue a career in the legal field, but instead dedicated himself to journalism and editorship. In 1847, he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, and in 1859 editor of The Southern Field and Fireside in Augusta, Georgia. Thompson did not take part in the Civil War, suffering from tuberculosis. After a recuperative trip to Scotland, went to London in 1864, became editor of the Index, a pro-Confederate newspaper, and promoted the Southern cause throughout various literary and social circles. Thompson was introduced to Thomas Carlyle by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie in October. On the fourteenth, Thompson spent the first of many evenings at Carlyle's House, engaging in discourse which Carlyle so delighted in that he insisted upon accompanying Thompson to his hotel in the evening, where they conversed on various topics from Christopher Wren to Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He continued to visit Carlyle several times a month until Thompson's return to Virginia in September 1866.[3]
In 1866 he became editor of the New York Evening Post, a position that he maintained until his death in New York in 1873.
Thompson was also a poet, most of his works being war-poems.
^Giemza, Bryan Albin; Flora, Joseph M.; Vogel, Amber (2006). Southern writers: a new biographical dictionary. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. p. 400. ISBN0-8071-3123-7. on Google Books
^Fulton, Maurice Garland, ed. (1917). "John Reuben Thompson" . Southern Life in Southern Literature. Ginn & Co., Boston – via Wikisource.
^Fusco, Richard (2004). "Thompson, John Reuben". In Cumming, Mark (ed.). The Carlyle Encyclopedia. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. pp. 467–468.