H. M. Tomlinson (Henry Major Tomlinson) Biography

British travel writer and novelist, born in East London; he left school at the age of 12 and worked as a shipping clerk till 1904, when he began his career as a journalist. His assignments included a series of voyages to remote locations; the journey up the Amazon he made in 1909 was recorded in his first and most celebrated book, The Sea and the Jungle (1912). After three years as a war correspondent in France he became literary editor of the Nation in 1917. His travel writings also include South to Cadiz (1934) and the essays on the Dutch East Indies in Tidemarks (1924) and Malay Waters (1950). Gallions Reach (1927), the first of his novels to gain wide notice, draws heavily on his experiences of the seas and jungles of South-East Asia. The most highly regarded of his many works of fiction is All Our Yesterdays (1930), a compelling narrative of the First World War which echoes his explicit polemic against warfare in Mars His Idiot (1935); The Trumpet Shall Sound (1957), his last novel, was acclaimed for its portrayal of a London family during the air-raids of the Second World War. Among the numerous collections of Tomlinson's essays, in which his stylistic accomplishment is most readily evident, are London River (1921), Gifts of Fortune (1926), and the autobiographical pieces of A Mingled Yarn (1953).