lucubration

plural lucubrations

1. countableuncountableIntense and prolonged study or meditation; especially, late at night.

   The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of a severer and more laborious kind. It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration.

   1776–1788, Edward Gibbon, “chapter III”, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC

2. countableuncountableThe product of such study; often, writings.

   'You have been good enough to allude to me in one of your recent lucubrations,' he said, shaking the paper at me.

   1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Disintegration Machine

   2 more examples

   With his own ghostly voice, he had exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial duty and reverence towards him,—who might reasonably regard himself as my official ancestor,—to bring his mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrations before the public.

   1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC

   There is General Blair. True, his lucubrations on negro supremacy are ludicrous enough, but it will not do to speak lightly of his ability. There is power in his organization.

   1868, Carl Schurz, The Road to Peace — a Solid, Durable Peace