Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to C. M. Doughty
All Souls Oxford.
30. 7. 20.
Dear Mr. Doughty,
I have been very much at fault lately: but I wanted to get things settled a little before I wrote to you. I have no doubt that Duckworth will have written to you about the Medici edition of Arabia Deserta. I hope you will accept it, for it is very difficult to get any book out now-a-days. Your share is miserable: and the price is very high: but the original now stands at over £30, and this is at least an improvement on that. Also I feel that the great thing is to get it set up. This is only a first printing of 500 copies, but it has been designed to cover its expenses, and the book will always be in hand to reprint when the 500 are sold. I think that these later reprints can be sold cheaper, and so the book may at last reach a full public.
There are just two difficulties. To catch the collector of editions, this should be a little different from the old. Nothing can be changed in it as it stands, so I suggested that you might be persuaded to write an additional preface. My hopes were that perhaps you would just put down on paper, easily, the 'why' you went to Arabia. I don't mean Medain Salih, but to write something: and it should be exceedingly interesting if you would say how you wrote it - the relation between the notes you took and the finished book: and how you were able to take such notes without being stopped. These are only suggestions - but I hope you will do something, because it would help to clear the 500 off, and till then Mr. Lee Warner is risking a good deal of money.
The other difficulty is worse. They have asked me to write a note introducing it. I feel this as absurd as it would be to introduce Shakespeare. However they urged that I had an advertisement value, especially in America which has hitherto hardly known you, and which ought to buy nearly half the 500 - and so I said that I would do it, if you would allow it to be done. I'm afraid you will feel it rather an outrage on the book; and I shall be delighted if you do. The only risk is of Mr. Lee Warner then trying to avoid the contract: and I'd do almost anything to get Arabia Deserta on sale again.
I have left no room to thank you for the ostrich egg: it is a very splendid egg, to have such a pedigree, and I will see it properly bestowed.
About the portrait: Rothenstein has been house-moving, and then a little ill. I hope to send Mrs. Doughty a collection of his drawings soon to reassure her on his sobriety (he is almost too sober I am afraid): John is greater: Do you think it could be put into the new edition?
Yours sincerely
T E Lawrence
| Source: | DG 309-10 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 24 January 2006 |
T. E. Lawrence chronology
1888 16 August: born at Tremadoc, Wales
1896-1907: City of Oxford High School for Boys
1907-9: Jesus College, Oxford, B.A., 1st Class Hons, 1909
1910-14: Magdalen College, Oxford (Senior Demy), while working at the British Museum's excavations at Carchemish
1915-16: Military Intelligence Dept, Cairo
1916-18: Liaison Officer with the Arab Revolt
1919: Attended the Paris Peace Conference
1919-22: wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1921-2: Adviser on Arab Affairs to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office
1922 August: Enlisted in the Ranks of the RAF
1923 January: discharged from the RAF
1923 March: enlisted in the Tank Corps
1923: translated a French novel, The Forest Giant
1924-6: prepared the subscribers' abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1927-8: stationed at Karachi, then Miranshah
1927 March: Revolt in the Desert, an abridgement of Seven Pillars, published
1928: completed The Mint, began translating Homer's Odyssey
1929-33: stationed at Plymouth
1931: started working on RAF boats
1932: his translation of the Odyssey published
1933-5: attached to MAEE, Felixstowe
1935 February: retired from the RAF
1935 19 May: died from injuries received in a motor-cycle crash on 13 May
1935 21 May: buried at Moreton, Dorset