Bruce Frederick Cummings (1889-1919), who wrote under the pseudonym W.N.P. Barbellion, was a naturalist who worked in the Natural History Department of the British Museum. Much of his short life was overshadowed by ill-health, and he died shortly after the publication of his most famous work, The Journal of a Disappointed Man, noted for its keen observations of the world around him and its alternating moods of exhilaration and despair. Two subsequent titles, A Last Diary, and Enjoying Life and other literary remains, appeared posthumously. All three, plus a new introduction, are contained in the present volume.