T. E. Lawrence

Contents lists

1888-1910

1911

1912

1913

1914

1915-16

1917-18

1919-20

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

Updated June 2012

T. E. Lawrence to Bruce Rogers

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3/3/30

Dear B.R.

Here are IX and X back, with after-thoughts and corrections by myself W. hasn't got all his notions through, this time. I find him a bit matter-of-fact, sometimes. However he lets pass many things which a good scholar would utterly despise - so clearly we must praise him in the balance sheets. You are a better (literary) critic

'Gurling' is a first rate word, and the derivation seems dear. Let us have it. I should leave 'same' and the dash, too, and let the pedants go hang. I suppose 'dompter' is mostly French: but the XVIth Century English used it.

I have not cut out many epithets, in these books. Some of them have value. The author wrote them deliberately, as part of the epic tradition, and the text loses if they all disappear. Loses dignity, I should say. 'Wise eyed' has gone into Book XIII which reads fairly well now, I think, though it is yet unfinished: in its third edition, to be exact.

I am sorry about the Vs. I shall sign myself SHAW in future. The red roof enclosed is good. I like the idea, and provided that the solid colours came out strongly and happily - why it would be distinctly a feature. Ethereal is the exact word to hit them off. Black for Pluto and Persephone, perhaps: all the spectrum for Iris:- Lord, how we could run on! As a compromise, I think the gold, black and red an admirable solution.

Yours

T.E.S.

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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