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31:3 Book Reviews tirely of the story of Lawrence's blowing up a bridge on the Damascus-Medina Railway: "His white Bedouin robes were mudstained. He was bare foot. . . ." After his spectacular raid at Mudauwra "the sheik of the Beni Atiyeh Bedouins sent an urgent message to Faisal, the leader of the Arab Revolt: 'Send us a lurens and we'll blow up trains with it . . . SEND US A LURENS!'" Somehow in three short pages Simmons manages to capture Lawrence's mystique more than all of the 235 in Yardley's biography. Simmons then discusses other "Passionate Pilgrims"—including Napoleon, Stanhope and Doughty—explaining that "From Richard Burton to T. E. Lawrence a certain breed of English craved the desert as a field of self denial and an arena for personal definition through which he could take a measure of his deepest self." His last chapter is devoted entirely to Lawrence: "Knight Enant, Bar Sinister ." His recounting of Lawrence's exploits is most laudatory and positive. He quotes Professor Paul Zweig's study The Adventurer in accounting for the adulation accorded Lawrence: "his measure was legendary, not military." (355) Simmons's compressions of the Lawrence story into a chapter of 57 pages keeps the excitement without losing much of the complexity—although, of course, there is not the body of facts and details as in Yardley's book. At the end, Simmons sums up Lawrence by quoting what Lawrence wrote about himself in an omitted chapter to Seven Pillars of Wisdom (which Simmons considers "great literature and deserves to be studied as such"): "I did my best." James C. Simmons seems to answer Michael Yardley's "Was Lawrence a true hero?" with a "Yes!" Marianna Brose Arizona State University ARNOLD BENNETT LETTERS James Hepburn, ed. Letters of Arnold Bennett, Volume IV: Family Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. $89.00 With the publication of this the fourth and concluding volume of the Letters of Arnold Bennett, an ambitious project which has taken more than twenty years to appear in print has been completed. Professor Hepburn remarks that the delay of some sixteen years between volume three and the present volume was due to "copyright and other problems." This concluding volume is entitled Family Letters, and it covers the period from October 1899 to 4 Febmary 1931 (Bennett died of typhoid fever on 27 March 1931. Before turning to this specific volume of Family Letters, one should perhaps attempt to put into perspective the overall organization of these four volumes. The anangement of the letters in this edition of the Collected Letters is somewhat different from the typical and, even, the expected anangement. Usually the edited conespondence is assembled together into one massive, chrono342 31:3 Book Reviews logical collection that starts with birth and concludes with the last rites. Hepburn has elected to do things differently in this edition. Volume one (published in 1966) presents Bennett's conespondence with his hterary agent J.B. Pinker. The letters to and from Bennett and Pinker and the Pinker firm began in January 1901 when Pinker first became Bennett's literary agent and concluded with the final letter, dated 28 January 1931, from Bennett to Eric Pinker in which Bennett discussed the sales of Imperial Palace. The two middle volumes—volume two (published in 1968) and three (published in 1970)—present Bennett's "general conespondence" to "friends, acquaintances, business associates, and strangers." The second volume includes Bennett's letters from 1889-1915; the third, from 1916-1931. Volume four—Family Letters—is the largest tome, printing some 22% of the available conespondence. Included are letters to his favorite brother, Septimus; to his favorite sister, Tertia and her husband, W.W. Kennerley; there are also letters to some of his other brothers and sisters and to a number of nephews, nieces, and some personal friends. But the three major recipients of Bennett's conespondence are, as would be expected, his two wives—first, Marguerite Soulié Bennett; then Dorothy Cheston Bennett; and his adopted son, Richard. Such an anangement of the letters in this way serves effectively to compartmentalize the conespondence. Organizing the very extensive materials of Bennett's correspondence in this manner (being...

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