The Home Letters of T.E. Lawrence and His Brothers.
New York: MacMillan, 1954. First Printing of the First US Edition. A Very Good Plus copy in a Very Good plus unclipped dust jacket with two short closed edge tears, and some light edge wear. This is essentially the British edition with the black cloth binding, British sheets with the Macmillan titlepage cancel added and jacket with the price in pounds and the UK publisher Blackwell on the spine. These letters are, in the main, a record of three lives coming to first flower in the decade before 1914; and it must be said at once that they add little that is new to our direct knowledge of T. E. Lawrence's share in the Arab Revolt, of the writing of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, or of his later years as an Aircraftman in the R.A.F. But if we ask what manner of young man made the Arabian adventure, here is perhaps the fullest answer likely now to be given. Here we see T. E. Lawrence still unstrained, eager and impish; passionately discovering new horizons of knowledge and beauty ; pouring out the tale of his discoveries to hearers of whose sympathy he was sure ; yet now and then giving a hint of that streak of austerity, of ruthlessness, that was to send him white-hot through the desert-fighting and desert king-making of the war. At eighteen "It was very difficult to make notes on [some carvings in a ruined Breton castle] because of the darkness which was intense and because I was clinging with teeth and eyelids on a ledge about four inches wide half way up the tower." These letters show us a creature of human proportions and reasonable motives, a man whose career we can follow with sympathy even if not with entire understanding. Contains 45 sepia photographs of the people and places addressed in Lawrence's correspondence. Item #24508
Price: $350.00