English author who wrote The Journal of a Disappointed Man (1919), extracts from diaries that he had kept between 1903 and 1917. The book was immediately acclaimed upon publication, a few months before Cummings' death, not only for providing a vivid insight into his passion for zoology and music but also as a poignant revelation of the sense of failure and thwarted ambitions of a sensitive yet objectively minded man.

Frail and shy, Cummings was determined by a childhood love of nature for a career as a naturalist. After years of private study he won a post at the British Museum of Natural History, which enabled him to abandon his journalism career, work that he found disagreeable. Posthumous books were Enjoying Life and Other Literary Remains (1919) and A Last Diary (1920).