LAWRENCE, T. E. [David Garnett].
The Letters of T. E. Lawrence.
London: Jonathan Cape, 1938.
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“Sincerity is the only written thing which time improves”: First Edition of The Letters of T. E. Lawrence of Arabia
First edition, first issue of the most important collection of Lawrence’s correspondence. First issue points of “Baltic” on page 182 (later corrected to Balkan) and “T.E.L.” on page 495 (later corrected to T.E.S.). Octavo, original publisher’s buckram with gilt titles to the spine, top stain orange, illustrated with 16 plates including the frontispiece and 4 maps, 2 of which are folding. Near fine in a very good dust jacket with some chipping to the spine.
In this book the career of T. E. Lawrence, from the time he was a schoolboy interested in archaeology until his death in 1935, is recorded almost entirely in his own words, in his letters and in unpublished secret documents and official reports. Edited by the novelist David Garnett and published in 1938, three years after Lawrence’s death, the volume gathers more than five hundred of his letters to correspondents ranging from Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Hardy to E. M. Forster and Robert Graves. The letters span his archaeological work at Carchemish, his leadership in the Arab Revolt, the Paris Peace Conference, and his later years as an enlisted man in the Royal Air Force under the assumed names Ross and Shaw, revealing the wit, candor, and restless brilliance of one of the most fascinating figures of the twentieth century.