All Our Yesterdays

by H.M. Tomlinson

1930. Tomlinson was a shipping clerk, a journalist, a war correspondent, a newspaper editor, and a travel writer and novelist. His subject matter is often natural history or the foolishness of mortals. His accounts of the sea, travel, and the Great War have not been surpassed. His antiwar novel, All Our Yesterdays, begins: The traffic of Dockland, where my omnibus stopped, loosened into a broadway. There the vans and lorries, released from the congestion of narrow streets, opened out and made speed in an uproar of iron-shod wheels and hooves on granite blocks. I could hear progress. It was on its way. It was pouring about in a triumphant muddle of noise too loud to be doubted. There was no need to repose on faith in the favored evolution of man. That wonderful conjuration of good things out of this planet by the steam-engine and the cotton-jenny was dominant. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

445 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Henry Major Tomlinson

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

All Our Yesterdays / H. M. Tomlinson. A well-crafted novel, in my opinion, about the first two decades of the twentieth century. It is a story of young British men in England, Africa, and Europe, with World War I the main focus. I have read it described as “anti-war”: I would say it is “realistic.” Published in 1930, it is appropriately characteristic of its culture. I concur with Hugh Walpole that it is of universal significance, an honest rendering of its time and place. Spare me any pro-war books!