In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • T. E. Lawrence Correspondence:VII
  • Stephen E. Tabachnick
T. E. Lawrence Correspondence with Edward and David Garnett. T. E. Lawrence Letters, Vol. VII. Jeremy and Nicole Wilson, eds. Salisbury: Castle Hill Press, 2016. xvii + 302 pp. Cloth £170.50

THE WILSONS' seventh volume of Lawrence of Arabia's letters is on the same high level as the first six: excellently annotated and beautifully printed and bound by Castle Hill Press, the Wilsons' own imprint. One expects no less of Jeremy Wilson, the leading Lawrence scholar today, and his wife Nicole, who has co-edited previous volumes. Like previous volumes containing Lawrence's correspondence with George Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, E. M. Forster and F. L. Lucas, and Henry Williamson among others, this volume is especially valuable in a literary sense since Edward Garnett was one of the very best publishers' readers and did a wonderful job of commenting on Lawrence's 1922 text of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Edward's son David, a novelist, also had an interesting correspondence with Lawrence although they were never as close as Lawrence and Edward were. The book concludes with Edward's contribution to A. W. Lawrence's edited volume T. E. Lawrence by His Friends as well as a draft of David's unpublished contribution to that volume and three reviews, all of which add to the picture of Lawrence which we derive from his letters, which are in themselves very well-written. And one annotation includes Wilson's own discussion with a bookseller who knew Lawrence.

Lawrence's correspondence with Edward Garnett is very revealing. His comments on the Deraa incident—which details in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom his deliberate rape after capture by Turkish soldiers in order to break his spirit, as well as his comments on his life in the R.A.F.—are honest and straightforward to a degree not seen in most other correspondence or in The Mint, his book about his postwar life in the service. While that book is very straightforward, in this correspondence, he is even more explicit about not liking the noise and the "animal spirits" of his barracks-mates.

Moreover, in this correspondence with Edward Garnett, he goes into detail when discussing which events he wishes to remove from the Oxford [End Page 118] text—the early 1922 text of Seven Pillars of Wisdom—or revise and the reasons for his decisions. Lawrence describes what he considers the most well-written sections and the process of his own revision of the 1922 text into the text that became the Subscriber's Edition of 1926, which is the standard text used today. He thanks Garnett for praise of his manuscript, which he says convinced him not to burn it. Garnett also worked on an abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom which he discussed with Lawrence but which was never published (and is now in the Houghton Library at Harvard). Lawrence apologized to Garnett for not using his abridgement; instead, Lawrence created his own abridgement, Revolt in the Desert (1927), which became a best-seller. Obviously, all of these discussions include much valuable information for any scholar working on the history of the composition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and once again we must be very grateful to the Wilsons for making them available outside of rare books libraries. Similarly, the letters from Lawrence to Garnett about The Mint are valuable.

Lawrence also expresses his opinions about many writers, including W. H. Hudson, Edward Thomas, Tennyson, and Forster, all of whom he held in especially high regard. On the other hand, he continually runs Seven Pillars of Wisdom down and refuses to see himself as a writer of any worth, especially when he discusses Revolt in the Desert, which he sees as a parody of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. However, Edward Garnett recognizes the brilliance of Seven Pillars of Wisdom and its one-of-a-kind quality, calling Lawrence a born writer and encouraging him to write an autobiography of his whole life. Garnett's son, David, also praises Seven Pillars of Wisdom very highly as the best book to come out of the Great War, even though he complains about Lawrence's shift...

pdf

Share