I completed Lawrence of Arabia, The Authorised Biography in 1989. The full text ran to 1,200 pages – around half a million words. It was published in Britain that year by Heinemann, and in the US by Atheneum in 1990. The New York Times Review of Books ranked it among the fourteen best titles of its year. Their reviewer had written: “This biography will endure beside Seven Pillars as his monument, and any future book about T. E. Lawrence will be but a commentary on it”. Malcolm Brown, writing in the London Daily Telegraph, described it as: “the solid sheet-anchor study this subject has long required”. Kirkus Reviews labelled it the “definitive historical biography” (more review comments here).

Unlike some biographies, the text draws extensively on contemporary letters and reports. The narrative is not my personal interpretation of Lawrence’s life, but the story revealed by surviving records. In that sense, the treatment is much more like a TV documentary than a drama – and that is why the content has not gone out of date. No biography written since has taken the same approach, so the book remains unique.

This said, while the record of fact presented in the biography has not changed, there has been further research. Since 1997 I myself have worked on a (continuing) major scholarly edition of Lawrence’s works and letters. Editorial research that focuses on individual texts and relationships has, inevitably, uncovered yet more about Lawrence’s life.

Earlier this year a publisher asked if I would allow a reprint of the biography. The request brought me back to a project I have thought about for some time: the need to review and update the biography in the light of more recent research. With the centenary of WWI approaching and publishing developments such as eBooks and Print on Demand, this is surely the time to do it.

Before starting work, I needed to recover the publishing rights of the original editions. That is now done, so I am free to go ahead.

As it happens, the project fits well with my other plans:

• We are currently working on four more volumes of Lawrence’s post-war correspondence. These, together with the post-war writings already published, provide a good context for reviewing the third part of the biography, ‘Writer and Serviceman’
• During 2012 I hope to finish Letters from Carchemish. That will be a good time to tackle Part I of the biography, ‘Archaeology and Travel’
• During 2012-13, I expect to give much more time to research on the Arab Revolt and the Peace Conference. At the same time I hope to complete Part 2 of the biography, ‘The Years of Conflict’.

The task of reviewing the text, after so long and now from a fresh perspective, turns out to be extremely interesting.

The edition is in three parts:

• Works

• Correspondence with writers, bookmen and artists (ten volumes)

• General correspondence and minor writings

Titles shown in blue have already been issued. Titles shown in green are in various stages of preparation.

WORKS (in approximate order of writing)

T. E. Lawrence, Military Report on the Sinai Peninsula (compiled 1914)

176p., 2 folding maps. 227 numbered copies, 2008. More information >>

T. E. Lawrence. Towards An English Fourth: fragments and echoes of Seven Pillars of Wisdom 1918-21

280p., plates. 227 numbered copies, 2009. Most of the seventeen pieces in this volume were originally published as articles in newspapers or periodicals, but all eight surviving chapters of Lawrence’s 1920 Seven Pillars abridgement are here, as well as earlier draft . More information >>

T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, The Complete 1922 Text

Large-format edition: 912p., 152p. illustrations and 2 folding maps. 752 numbered three-volume sets, 1997;

One volume Library Edition: 896p., plates, index. 1225 numbered copies, 2003. The 49p. scholarly index by Hazel Bell, first published in this edition, won the Wheatley Medal.  More information >>

Adrien Le Corbeau, Le Gigantesque, translated into English by T. E. Lawrence as The Forest Giant. Parallel French and English texts

224p., frontis. 375 numbered copies, 2004. More information >>

T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Parallel 1922 and 1926 Texts

Large-format edition: 1064p, printed in double-column. 37 numbered two-volume sets, 1997. More information >>

T. E. Lawrence ‘The Mint’ and Later Writings About Service Life

The 1928 text of The Mint together with extracts from letters, extending Lawrence’s account of his life in the RAF from 1927 to 1935. Large-format edition, 352 pages, 287 numbered copies, 2009 More information>>. Library Edition, 475 numbered copies, 2010. More information >>

Some minor works, such as Crusader Castles, Dairy 1911 and the 200 Class Seaplane Tender manual are included in ‘General Correspondence and Minor Writings’, see below.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH WRITERS, BOOKMEN AND ARTISTS

Much of this this ten-volume series has already been issued.

Volumes I-IV: T. E. Lawrence, Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1922-1926, 1927, 1928, 1929-1935

248, 256, 264 and 304p; illus. 475 numbered four-volume sets, 2000-2009. More information >>

Volume V: T. E. Lawrence, Correspondence with E. M. Forster and F. L. Lucas

328 pages, frontis, 277 numbered copies, 2010. More information >>

Volume VI: T. E. Lawrence, More Correspondence with Writers

Some 350 letters including including lengthy exchanges with C.M. Doughty, Frederic Manning, Siegfried Sassoon and Mrs Thomas Hardy, and shorter exchanges with Maurice Baring, James Barrie, Laurence Binyon, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Edmund Blunden, Robert Bridges, John Brophy, John Buchan, Noël Coward, R. B. Cunninghame Graham, C. Day Lewis, David Garnett, Harley Granville-Barker, James Hanley, Compton Mackenzie, Ezra Pound, V. S. Prichett, Herbert Read, Elliot Springs, J. C. Squire, Hugh Walpole, Thornton Wilder, and W. B. Yeats.

Scheduled for publication early 2012. More information >>

Volume VII: T. E. Lawrence, Correspondence with Bookmen

A major volume containing correspondence with Jonathan Cape, Sydney Cockerell, C.J. Cumberlege, Peter Davies, F. N. Doubleday, Edward Garnett, St. John Hornby, Ralph Isham, Manning Pike, Bruce Rogers, Raymond Savage, Whittingham & Griggs, and G. Wren Howard.

Scheduled for publication 2012-13

Volume VIII: Correspondence with Robert Graves

Scheduled for publication 2014

Volume IX: Correspondence with Henry Williamson

238 pages, frontis, approx. 500 numbered copies (of a nominal limitation of 702 copies) 2000. More information >>

Volume X: Correspondence with Artists

Including Herbert Baker, C.F. Bell, H.S. Ede, Eric Kennington, Augustus John, Paul Nash, William Roberts, William Rothenstein, and Kathleen Scott

Scheduled for 2013-15.

GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE AND MINOR WRITINGS

Letters, 1905-10 to his family and others, together with Lawrence’s undergraduate thesis The Influence of the Crusades on European Military Architecture – to the end of the XIIth Century [Crusader Castles]. Illustrated with photographs of castles visited by Lawrence

• Letters from Carchemish, including letters to his family, D.G. Hogarth, E.T. Leeds, C. M. Doughty, James Elroy Flecker, and others, together with a selection of collateral documents and including the Diary 1911.
• War Diaries and Letters, including Lawrence’s surviving wartime diaries and notebooks, his reports and private correspondence, and significant references to him in wartime records
• Political and Diplomatic Writings and Correspondence 1918-1922. Starting with letters and minutes written after his return to England in 1918, the volume will cover the 1919 Peace Conference, Lawrence’s work in the Colonial Office with Winston Churchill, and his final diplomatic mission to the Middle East
• Post-war Correspondence with Family and Advisers, including D.G. Hogarth, Robin Buxton, Lionel Curtis, Sarah Lawrence, A. W. Lawrence, John Snow and Edward Eliot
• Correspondence with Journalists and Historians including R.D. Blumenfeld, Geoffrey Dawson, B.H. Liddell Hart, Lowell Thomas
• General Post-War Correspondence, including letters to Nancy Astor, Lil Black, George Brough, Edward Elgar, Ernest Thurtle, and A.P. Wavell.
• Service correspondence, including both official and personal letters to wartime, Tank Corps and RAF personnel – but excluding correspondence about his work on boats.
• Boats for the R.A.F., 1931-1935, a volume containing correspondence and reports relating to Lawrence’s work on R.AF. boats. The reports include his Notes on the 200 Class R.A.F. Seaplane Tender.  (To be issued in 2011)

How to obtain these books

This a fine-press series, printed for subscribers. The series editor is Jeremy Wilson. Most people buy copies direct from the publishers. Some library agents and specialist booksellers may be able to get copies for you. You will not find the books in high-street bookstores or on Amazon (though Amazon may list copies held by specialist booksellers).

By far the cheapest way to obtain a copy of a forthcoming work is to order it during the advance subscription offer. We try to notify regular subscribers and others we think may be interested when these offers are available. If you see a future title that interests you, ask to be notified when the subscription offer is posted.For other queries, see the Castle Hill Press FAQ page.

At present, many titles in the series are in print. Some second-hand booksellers, unaware of this, ask more for a second-hand copy than the new-copy price. Note also that you are extremely unlikely to find, on its own, a second-hand copy of Volume IV of Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw. It was produced in a smaller print-run than the earlier volumes and has only been sold as part of a four-volume set.

Moreover, developing technology is likely to render today’s ebooks inaccessible within a few years. Do you, for example, have equipment that will read an 8-inch floppy disk in CPT format (at one time a high-end word-processing technology)? If someone does have such equipment, they’ll probably charge you handsomely for transferring data to media you can still access.

In future, a few enthusiasts may collect obsolete ebook readers – though it will be ever more difficult to maintain them. But frankly, a digital inscription seems to me about as emotive as a rubber stamp. There seems no scope at all for a collectors’ market in ebook association copies.

That may help to explain why pundits forecast a collapse of the paperback market, but a continuing demand for small high-quality printed editions. As I’ve pointed out before, those high-quality editions may have to be far more expensive than today’s hardbacks. That’s because they’ll have to carry the entire print-origination cost, without any prospect of typesetting being re-used in paperback editions and reprints.

But at least – if high-quality editions do survive – there’ll be still something you can ask an author to inscribe for you. Authors’ lives would be that much more drab and isolated if such requests were never made.

Several things have struck me while gathering the texts for Boats for the R.A.F. 1931-1935.

First, this is an area that Lawrence’s biographers have, on the whole, left unexplored beyond a bare outline. Some, like Victoria Ocampo and Harold Orlans seem to have had little personal enthusiasm for boats or machinery. Fair enough, but the result was blindness to really significant aspects of TEL’s personality and skillset. You can’t leave gaps like that if you are seriously interested in someone’s biography. Gaps weaken the validity of your conclusions. As TEL wrote (to F.L.Lucas): “I like reading all a man. Often at the very end one suddenly seems to comprehend him”. That is the guiding principle behind our edition of his writings.

Second, it is surprising how much material survives from TEL’s work on boats. The volume as it stands runs to 350 pages. This week and next we are running a final check in some less obvious places in case they hold anything we are missing. So the book just might grow a bit more.

350 pages of writing by TEL is quite a bit, especially when it provides a coherent narrative of his work during four years of his service career (and, as it turned out, the last four years of his life). That narrative is, incidentally, central to a question on which Lawrence’s biographers are divided: did he find those years fulfilling and satisfying – or were they really a period of pointless and miserable time-serving?

One reason so much evidence survives is that officers and other ranks who worked with Lawrence hung on  to his letters and reports. Most of this material ought to have been kept in official files – and maybe it once was. Had it stayed in those files, it’s probable that little would survive. As it is, the documents were hoarded and later, in most cases, sold. Today they are widely scattered. Some may have been lost, and some may still be lurking unrecorded in private collections; nevertheless, we have managed to reunite enough of their texts to tell a fairly detailed story.

In that context, the Harry Ransom Centre at Austin, Texas merits particular acknowledgement. Many collections might have sought to acquire TEL’s literary, military or diplomatic correspondence; but HRC – in its focus on Lawrence’s post-war years – also acquired some of the key Boats material, including most of Lawrence’s letters to Flt. Lt. W.E.G. Beauforte-Greenwood, TEL’s boss at the RAF Marine Branch, and TEL’s final log of winter overhaul work at Bridlington. HRC also holds one of the few surviving copies of his 200 Class Seaplane Tender manual (it is an early uncorrected copy, and I am not sure where it came from).

As to the story itself, two things are striking. First, Lawrence’s acute grasp of technical questions, and secondly his skill as a technical author.

One can see, going back to his work on photography and at Carchemish, as well as his subsequent interest in the mechanics of fine printing, that Lawrence must have had some practical ability. But what is displayed here is far more than mere ability. Sydney Smith, his Commanding Officer at Plymouth, considered him “one of the ablest mechanics in his command” (Golden Reign, 1940. p. 140). Did ‘T.E. Shaw’ (as he was then known) learn all that just from tinkering with his motor-cycles?

I think not – and this is a case where the written record of an earlier period implies far more than it spells out. We know that, from the beginning of 1927 until May 1928, Lawrence worked as clerk in the Engine Repair Shop at Karachi. That was the base where the engines of all RAF aircraft in India were periodically returned for complete overhaul. Lawrence’s job was to make a detailed official record of every stage – as the engines were stripped down and reassembled – noting all abnormal damage and replacement parts. Lawrence mentions this job, but I have seen no examples of these reports. Then, three years later, we suddenly encounter this man who – deus ex machina -  understands the function of every component in an internal combustion engine, knows how to remove and reassemble it, and can rapidly grasp the strong and weak points of particular design features. We shouldn’t be surprised. His work on aircraft engines at Karachi was an exceptional apprenticeship. He thoroughly understood what he was writing about.

We must also owe to the Karachi machine-shop his extraordinary ability to describe these things in words. Over the years I have done a good deal of technical writing. It isn’t easy. In fact, some engineers with great technical knowledge find it difficult to put what they know into words that are easily understood. Lawrence’s technical writing remains amazingly clear to this day. Anyone who knows the basic functions of the parts of an internal combustion engine (the kind of thing many now learn at school) should have little difficulty understanding the problems and solutions he describes.

The same is true of his understanding and writing about boats. We connect Lawrence’s name with the desert, but boats were not a new enthusiasm. He had even shipped an Oxford canoe to Carchemish, before the war. By the time he began working on RAF boats, he had owned and maintained an American Biscayne Baby speedboat – built to cutting-edge design – for over a year.   Soon after arriving at Plymouth (a seaplane station) in 1929 he had been posted to the Marine and Workshop section.  So by 1931 he knew plenty about boats.

And how did his superiors rate him? “Dear Wing Commander,” Beauforte-Greenwood wrote to Sydney Smith in May 1931, “May I express to you my great appreciation for all the assistance you have been good enough to afford my branch by allowing Shaw to run the trials of the new speed-boat at Hythe.”

Notice the word “run”.

Boats for the R.A.F. is one of two planned Castle Hill Press volumes that will bridge between our editions of Lawrence’s works and our T.E. Lawrence Letters series. It contains his notes on the 200 Class Seaplane Tender, as well as other reports that most people would classify as a ‘work’. These include the log he kept during the winter of 1934-5 describing the overhaul of RAF boats at Bridlington. The previously unpublished log, which runs to more than 70 manuscript pages, was the last substantial writing task he completed before his death in May 1935.

These writings are set in the context of  letters to RAF personnel involved in work on marine craft. Together, they present a remarkable picture of his last years.

They also illustrate – more clearly than any of his other writings or letters -the strength of Lawrence’s practical gifts. What you read here tells you something important about the T.E. Lawrence who worked at Carchemish and fought in the Arab Revolt.

For me, this is one of the most significant volumes we have worked on. It tells a story that is important in Lawrence’s biography, but unavailable elsewhere in anything like this level of detail.

The subscription period ends on 4 March.

Links:

Prospectus and provisional specification

Subscription information

The subscription is now open again. For details see www.telstudies.org

Lawrence, said his friend Robert Graves, ‘compartmentalised’ his friendships. The volumes already published in the T. E Lawrence Letters series* provide ample evidence of that.

Although Lawrence met and corresponded with many contemporary writers, this was usually little more than friendly acquaintance. In a few cases, the relationship became more substantial and left behind a series of letters with significant biographical importance – often on both sides. Examples are Lawrence’s friendships with Edward Garnett, Robert Graves, the Shaws, and E.M. Forster.

The friendship with Forster is particularly interesting, for several reasons.

• Forster was one of the most constructive critics of Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

• During Lawrence’s lifetime he was the only person to make a serious comparison of the 1922 text of Seven Pillars and Lawrence’s 1926 subscribers’ abridgement.

• He was one of the first people to read and comment on The Mint.

• Conversely, Lawrence was one of the few people to read and comment on two of Forster’s better ‘unpublishable’ short stories. In order to make sense of Lawrence’s detailed comments we have included one of them, ‘Doctor Woolacott’, in the early version that Lawrence read.

• Lawrence’s friendship with Forster continued into the 1930s, although many of his other friendships with intellectuals had by then faded.

• After Lawrence’s death, Forster was appointed editor of his letters. He gave up the role in 1937 because of worries about possible libel actions (he had been successfully sued for an inadvertent libel  the previous year). By then Forster had roughed out the pre-war section of his letters collection, which we publish here. David Garnett, who took over as editor, produced a fine collection. Nevertheless, it is clear from this fragment that Forster’s volume would have been remarkable.

• When Forster’s writings on Lawrence are brought together, as they are here, his comments on Lawrence’s personality and literary achievements are substantial. Few of Lawrence’s friends left such perceptive and interesting accounts.

• A sub-plot in their relationship was Forster’s homosexuality, towards which Lawrence remained tolerant yet skilfully uninvolved.

• Having read and re-read the content of this volume many times during the editorial work, I came away with increased regard for Forster and Lawrence, both for their abilities and for their humanity.

Lawrence was first aware of F.L. Lucas through the latter’s published poetry – notably the poem ‘Skias Onar’ (which Lawrence added to Minorities). Lucas seems to have captured, especially in the final verse, some of the thought  that lay behind Lawrence’s dedication to Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

As Lucas was like Forster a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, Forster was able to introduce Lawrence to him. Although their original correspondence is missing, enough survives in transcript in the T.E. Lawrence Papers at the Bodleian Library to show that the admiration was mutual. Lucas, like Forster, dedicated a book to Lawrence: his prize-winning novel Cécile.

*The T.E. Lawrence Letters series includes surviving correspondence between T.E.Lawrence and his friends, as well as collateral writings such as articles about Lawrence published by his friends after his death. The aim of the edition is to provide an account of each relationship that is as complete as possible.

Lawrence worked on high-speed launches and other types of boat used by the Air Force from February 1931 until February 1935, when his term of RAF enlistment ended.

Many people find this the most difficult period of his career to comprehend. At the time, some of his ‘intellectual’ friends were disconcerted by his commitment to what they saw as the work of a low-grade mechanic. Some biographers have described it in terms of nihilism, a period in which Lawrence deliberately buried his talents, turning away from his previous life.

Certainly, he read fewer books and wrote shorter, less cerebral letters. After finishing his translation of the Odyssey in 1931 his literary output ceased. Former friends such as Robert Graves regretted the company he kept and lamented the loss of his polished Oxford accent.

By contrast, I think that these last years of Lawrence’s RAF service were highly positive and constructive. His role testing and helping to improve boats was creative and worthwhile. He brought to it practical abilities that had been evident throughout his life. He also had the skill to write persuasive reports, while his friendships with key figures in the Air Force and in Government enabled him to bypass obstacles in the military hierarchy in order to get things done. Lawrence approached the work with dedication and enthusiasm, knowing that he was making an important contribution.

I hope that some of this is apparent from the section ‘Later Writings About Service Life’ that we added to our edition of the 1928 text of The Mint. In this new volume we are gathering together a much fuller collection of Lawrence’s writings about RAF boats. These not only tell us in some detail what he was working on during those years, but also display his skill communicating technical matters to a wide range of readers.

I think that making these writings more easily available is an important step towards biographical balance. If future biographers and others who are seriously interested in Lawrence read them, they will at any rate not underrate or misconstrue this period of Lawrence’s life. Those who, like me, are interested in boats and mechanical topics will find that they tell an absorbing story.

The edition will be of 227 copies printed in the same large format as Military Report on the Sinai Peninsula and Towards ‘An English Fourth’.

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Print publishers are – to say the least – conservative about spending money on publicity.

eBooks, however, are a product of the consumer electronics industry. Like the motor-industry of old, this thrives on innovation and obsolescence, styling and fashion, and on products with a short life-span.  To keep its product-cycle churning, the consumer electronics industry spends huge sums on advertising. It supports a legion of specialist journalists and magazines.

Although eBooks represent only a small fraction of the total book market, the eBook industry is currently making a huge promotion effort. Every day some new “expert” tells us that eBooks will soon take over; that traditional books are doomed.

This publicity must be costing a lot, and there is nothing altruistic about it. The dream is that eBook readers will become a consumer fashion-item like mobile phones. Users, once hooked, will regularly buy the latest eBook reader, while contributing to an everlasting income-stream from eBook downloads.

For the campaign to pay off, however, the industry needs to convert many, many more people to eBooks.

Will the dream come true? I don’t know. For the present, it seems to me that eBook readers are far too expensive. A high-spec reader would make a big hole in my book-buying budget. Most of the books I buy are for long-term use – but for the consumer-electronics industry “long term” is anathema. Printed books can last hundreds of years. Is there anything to guarantee that today’s eBook downloads will be readable on tomorrow’s readers? I already have that problem, as a publisher, accessing the electronic typesetting files of books we issued a few years ago. Newer versions of the same software won’t read files created in earlier versions. New computers won’t run the old software. So each year I have to spend time recovering and converting valuable data.

Mobile phones offered something new and uniquely useful – the ability to communicate on the move. The selling-point of eBooks is far weaker. They have to compete with an existing product that has been in universal use for centuries – and the reader/download combination is not cheap.

Mobile phones also succeeded because phone calls are widely used in business and in private life. Reading books, for many people, is a more occasional activity. If you read one book a month, and if downloads cost as much as a paperback, how could you possibly justify the additional cost of an eBook reader – a fragile, expensive machine that might be completely outdated within two or three years?

Yes, there are circumstances and applications where eBooks offer users an advantage over printed books. But those circumstances and applications are not universal. Would the offer of an eBook download look like much of a Christmas present?

The current blizzard of propaganda for eBooks makes it hard, if not impossible, to know what’s really happening. For me, though, the eBook reader/download combination appears to come at a hefty price. When you add in the technical uncertainties, the proposition doesn’t look so compelling.

In the past, like most self-employed people, I rarely acknowledged that one day I’d have to stop working. I enjoyed excellent health. ‘Retirement age’ was never an issue.

That changed in 2006, when I was ill for several months.  I realised that in 2014 – not so far away – I’d be 70. With luck I’ll be able to work long after that, but I can’t count on it.

It made sense to prioritise. In what field could I make the greatest contribution? The answer was obvious. I’d written T.E. Lawrence’s authorised biography and was committed to editing a major edition of his works and letters. That task benefits from a curious blend of inter-disciplinary knowledge about aspects of Lawrence’s life that I’ve built up during 40 years. It might be a long time before another editor came along with such a strange combination of expertise.

The edition is important because copies go to libraries and collections round the world. It brings together texts that a researcher might otherwise spend much time and money locating and copying. For example, material in the volume we are working on at present comes from four libraries in the US, two libraries in the UK, and two private collections. The authorised biography research archive, which we use when preparing notes, came from a far wider range of sources. Each volume in the Letters series contains a scholarly index. We are gradually integrating these in an online union index.

Occasionally, I hear  jibes that my work on T.E. Lawrence is becoming an industry (but what would they say if I decided to retire?!) The truth is that there’s lots I want to get done, and – being realistic – only limited time to do it. The Castle Hill Press edition of Lawrence’s works and letters will be a lasting contribution to scholarship. That’s doubtless why individuals and libraries subscribe.

So my principal aim, during the next few years, is to complete as much of the edition as I can. Nicole and I are working hard to achieve that.

My other chosen project is the Arab Revolt documents website – where there is currently more progress behind the scenes than online. Please be patient. It will be worth the wait.

Setting priorities means I can’t give time to all the things people would like me to do. The activities I choose are those that either contribute to our work (if only by raising money to help pay for research), or appeal to me for some other reason.  For example, I prefer to lecture abroad than in the UK simply because I enjoy travel!