Henry Major Tomlinson (21 June 1873 – 5 February 1958) was a British writer and

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

. He was known for anti-war and

travel writing Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel can ...

, novels and short stories, especially of life at sea. He was born and died in London.

Life

Tomlinson was brought up in

Poplar, London Poplar is a district in East London, England, the administrative centre of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, borough of Tower Hamlets. Five miles (8 km) east of Charing Cross, it is part of the East End of London, East End. It is identi ...

. He worked as a shipping clerk, and then as a reporter for the ''Morning Leader'' newspaper; he travelled up the

Amazon River The Amazon River (, ; es, Río Amazonas, pt, Rio Amazonas) in South America is the largest river by discharge volume of water in the world, and the disputed longest river system in the world in comparison to the Nile. The headwaters of t ...

for it. In

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

he was an official correspondent for the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

, in France. In 1917 he returned to work with H. W. Massingham on ''

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

'', which opposed the war. He left the paper in 1923, when Massingham resigned because of a change of owner and political line. His 1931 book ''

Norman Douglas George Norman Douglas (8 December 1868 – 7 February 1952) was a British writer, now best known for his 1917 novel ''South Wind''. His travel books, such as ''Old Calabria'' (1915), were also appreciated for the quality of their writing. L ...

'' was one of the first biographies of that scandalous but then much admired writer.

Works

* The Sea and the Jungle. Being the narrative of the voyage of the tramp steamer ''Capella'' from Swansea to Santa Maria de Belem do Grao Para in the Brazils (1912) * Old Junk (1918) stories *London River (1921) revised 1951 *Waiting for Daylight (1922) *Tidemarks: Some Records of a Journey to the Beaches of the Moluccas and the Forest of Malaya in 1923 (1924) *Gifts of Fortune With Some Hints For Those About to Travel (1926) *Under the Red Ensign (1926) * Gallions Reach (novel) (1927) *Out Of Soundings (1928) *A Brown Owl (1928) *Illusion: 1915 (1928) *

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Word ...

(1929) *Côte d'Or (1929) *Between the Lines (1930) *War Books: A Lecture Given at Manchester University 15 February 1929 (1930) *All Our Yesterdays (1930) *The Sky's the Limit (1930) *Great Sea Stories of All Nations (1930) editor *Best Short Stories Of the War (1931) editor *

(1931) *An Illustrated Catalogue of Rare Books on the East Indies and A Letter to a Friend (1932) *The Snows of Helicon (1933) *South to Cadiz (1934) *Below London Bridge (1934) *Mars His Idiot (1935) *RMS ''Queen Mary'', a noble tribute to the imagination of man (1935) with E. P. Leigh-Bennett *Pipe All Hands (1937) novel *The Day Before: A Romantic Chronicle (1939) *Modern Travel (1939) editor, anthology *Ports of Call (1939) in ''

The Queen's Book of the Red Cross ''The Queen's Book of the Red Cross'' was published in November 1939 in a fundraising effort to aid the Red Cross during World War II. The book was sponsored by Queen Elizabeth, and its contents were contributed by fifty British authors and artis ...

'' *The Wind is Rising. The war diary of H. M. Tomlinson and a vision of all our tomorrows (1941) *The Turn of the Tide (1945) *Morning Light: The Islanders in the Days of Oak and Hemp (1946) *Malay waters. the story of little ships coasting out of Singapore and Penang in peace and war (1950) *The Face of the Earth (1950) *The Haunted Forest (1951) *A Mingled Yarn: Autobiographical Sketches (1953) *H. M. Tomlinson: a Selection from His Writings (1953) edited by Kenneth Hopkins *The Trumpet Shall Sound (1957)

Reception

Tomlinson was much admired in the 1920s. In 1921,

Christopher Morley Christopher Darlington Morley (May 5, 1890 – March 28, 1957) was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet. He also produced stage productions for a few years and gave college lectures.''Online Literature'' Biography Morley was bo ...

praised what he saw as the "exquisite, considered prose" to be found in Tomlinson's 1918 book of essays, ''Old Junk'':

How direct and satisfying a passage to the mind Mr. Tomlinson's paragraphs have. How they build and cumulate, how the sentences shift, turn and move in delicate loops and ridges under the blowing wind of thought, like the sand of the dunes that he describes in one essay.Morley, Christopher, ed., ''Modern Essays'', p.210 (New York 1921).
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Frederic P. Mayer, however, writing in the ''Virginia Quarterly Review'', expressed a less admiring view:Frederick P. Mayer, 1928.

Notes

References

* Mayer, Frederick P.
H.M. Tomlinson: The Eternal Youth
'. Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1928, pp 72–82.

External links

* * * * *

* Henry Major Tomlinson Collection. General Collection. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Tomlinson, Hm 1873 births 1958 deaths 20th-century British male writers 20th-century British novelists 20th-century British short story writers British journalists British male journalists British male novelists British male short story writers British short story writers British travel writers People from Poplar, London