SOURCE: "H. M. Tomlinson," in Saturday Review of Literature, Vol. 3, No. 23, January, 1927, pp. 477-78.

In the following essay, Priestley praises Tomlinson's realistic portrayal of his travels.

Most of his readers, perhaps all but the most astute, would be surprised if they met him. There is nothing of the traveler about H. M. Tomlinson. He is not bronzed, hearty, hail-fellow-well-met, nor does he carry with him any suggestion of great distances and strange suns. Yet his appearance, I think, is significant, revealing not a little of his secret. At a first superficial glance, he looks like a rather hard-bitten city clerk. At a second glance, he looks like a gnome, who has come up from some elfin solitude to observe the stir of things on the bright surface of the world, to see men hurry down long streets, swing up to their navigating bridges, or dive below to their...