Author Biography
Henry Major Tomlinson (1873-1958) grew up in the East End of London, the great seaport (described inLondon River, destroyed in the Blitz). He became a shipping clerk, a journalist, a war correspondent, a newspaper editor, and a travel writer and novelist. He was greatly affected by the futile slaughter of World War I. His first book was ignored at the time but has been frequently reprinted since for a small, discerning audience such as yourself; his other works have not remained popular, at least in the United States. Deaf, bald, he always wore the black bowler hat of an East End clerk. Professional writers should not read Tomlinson. No doubt any who try will throw away their keyboards in disgust when they com-pare their own frail abilities. His style and thinking must have been influenced by Emerson and Thoreau but is really that of the King James Bible, Homer and Shakespeare. His subject matter is often natural history or the foolishness of mortals who do not always real-ize the transcendental reality behind a common glance. His accounts of the sea, travel, and the Great War have not been surpassed. He is one author who produces quotable paragraphs on each page and can be read with pleasure again and again. It is time today to acknowledge his greatness.
