Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Jonathan Cape
14 Barton Street
S.W.1.
23.3.23.
Dear Cape
Glad you are back - I hope with good fortune from the States.
I can't call now. Nothing else showed up after I got the push from the R.A.F. so I've signed on with the Army for seven years, and am at a camp in Dorsetshire. There is a chance of their sending me to India in the Autumn, and if I get leave as a preliminary to that I'll drop in and see the firm.
Played you a dirty trick when you were away, by lending Garvin (at his request) one of the copies of the complete book. Consequence will be that the Observer won't deal again, if there is an again.
Would you give Garnett the cut-down copy of the thing? It was his work, and very well done, and he spent much vain time upon it, and I feel guilty in his sight.
Since you went I've received three more pictures - portraits - for illustrations to The Seven Pillars. It will be a really good show, when it comes out: if it comes out.
Nothing doing now, of course.
Yours ever
T. E. Lawrence
| Source: | DG 404 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 28 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