English novelist and essayist who wrote naturally and with feeling about London, the sea, the tropics, and the futility of war.

Tomlinson grew up in the East End docks, and from early childhood developed a love for things connected with the sea. He became a journalist and fulfilled his ambition to travel. His first book, The Sea and the Jungle (1912), was written after he had made an expedition up the Amazon. Though ignored at the time, it remains his most representative book and is often reminiscent in style, as are his other works, of Thoreau and Emerson. Among his novels are Gallions Reach (1927), All Our Yesterdays (1930), and Morning Light (1946), but he is perhaps better known for his travel books: London River (1921), The Turn of the Tide (1945), and Malay Waters (1950).