SOURCE: "A Minor Master," in London Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 11, February, 1979, pp. 47-58.

In the following essay, Severn offers a post-centenary appreciation of Tomlinson's work.

The changes of taste and fashion since the war have suppressed, at least for the time being, a number of distinguished reputations. One thinks, for example, of R. C. Hutchinson, William Gerhardie, Hugh Kingsmill, Forrest Reid and R. B. Cunninghame Graham. H. M. Tomlinson is another of the casualties. His centenary in 1973 passed without notice, and not one of his thirty books is now in print in this country. But he was a writer of singular integrity and individuality who published nothing that was not distinguished, whether in essays and criticism, or works of travel, or novels—though these were, in strict terms, the least satisfactory of his books, the whole being usually less than the sum of the parts. Even the most ephemeral...