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Publishing Lawrence: A Selection of Ephemera

3 May 2023 | Lucy Smith

Jeremy Wilson was a keen book collector and began to collect books by and about Lawrence from his early days. He also collected ephemera and prospectuses relating to the publication of various books by and about Lawrence and his circle, many of which are beautiful objects in themselves. Here are a few highlights from the collection.

 

 

Works by Lawrence

The Wilderness of Zin

After Lawrence died in May 1935, there was an explosion of interest in his life, and many of the restrictions he had himself imposed on publication and anonymity were dropped. Publishers took advantage of this to issue a great number of Lawrence publications in the late 1930s. Jonathan Cape rushed to publish their Lawrence books, including the full text of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which was made widely available for the first time in 1935. They also published works from Lawrence’s back catalogue as an archaeologist. The Wilderness of Zin by Lawrence and Leonard Woolley documents the journey that the two undertook in 1914 around the Sinai Peninsula in search of biblical archaeology for the Palestine Exploration Fund.

Revolt in the Desert

According to Jeremy Wilson, this selection of “early reviews” of Revolt in the Desert was hastily published by Jonathan Cape within days of the publication of the book in 1927, such was its success. 

A letter in the Hogarth papers reveals that in the previous year, the TLS asked Lawrence’s mentor, David George Hogarth, to write an independent article on the 1926 “private edition” of Seven Pillars of Wisdom after Lawrence had specified two other people he had wanted to review Revolt in the Desert. This was not permitted as “we cannot in any circumstances allow an author to nominate his own reviewer”. However, Hogarth was a close friend of Lawrence himself and involved in the publication of the book, so the TLS asked him to write an article on how the Subscribers’ Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom was brought together. This was published in The Times in December 1926 and entitled “Lawrence of Arabia | Story of His Book | A Lavish Edition”. Ironically, Hogarth also went on to review Revolt in the Desert, the book that he had himself been heavily involved in producing, in the Times Literary Supplement of 10 March 1927.

 

Books and presses associated with Lawrence (see gallery below)

The Golden Cockerel Press:

This fine press published a number of works by Lawrence, including posthumous editions such as Crusader Castles, Men in Print, and Shaw-Ede: T.E. Lawrence’s Letters to H.S. Ede 1927-1935. Wilson acquired this beautiful prospectus for A Voyage Around the World from his friends at the Whittington Press, a modern day fine press that in 1988 published T.E. Lawrence: Letters to E.T. Leeds, edited by Wilson.

 

Siegfried Sassoon:

The poet Siegfried Sassoon (1888-1967) was a friend of Lawrence in the years after the First World War, and, according to Wilson’s biography, an early reader of  the 1922 version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom which he described a “GREAT BOOK, blast you”. Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, which recounts the life of fictional version of Sassoon before the First World War, was published in 1928.

 

Travels in Arabia Deserta:

Charles Montagu Doughty’s (1843-1926) magnum opus about desert travel was a strong influence on Lawrence’s own writing, and Lawrence was instrumental in getting the book republished in the early 1920s with an introduction by himself. This prospectus for the second edition of 1927 demonstrates how Jonathan Cape marketed the book based on connections to the recently published phenomenon of Revolt in the Desert.