Books

First edition, first impression, presentation copy inscribed by the editor on the front free endpaper "To E.M.F. with love from David Garnett". E. M. Forster shared a "rich, subtle and multifaceted aesthetic intimacy" (Medd, p. 260) developed through exchanging literature, a relationship that "deeply affected Lawrence's own sexual attitudes and self-understanding" (Medd, p. 261). Forster and Lawrence first met in 1921 at the house of Emir Feisal. Forster was impressed by Lawrence, who was already famous for his exploits in the Arab Revolt. Three years later Siegfried Sassoon asked Forster to read the as-yet unpublished Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which left him so inspired that he wrote a letter of effusive praise to Lawrence: "You will never show it to any one who will like it more than I do: its subject and incidentals suit me: also my critical sense never stops telling me it's fine" (Lawrence, 9). This kindled a friendship that lasted until Lawrence's death, as one of Forster's many queer relationships forged through the intimate exchange of literature. They continued most of their correspondence through letters, discussing and critiquing each other's work, but also visiting in person a number of times. In 1927, Forster dedicated The Eternal Moment and Other Stories, "To TE in the absence of anything else". When it came to putting together a posthumous volume of Lawrence's correspondence, Forster was invited by A. W. Lawrence to be its editor. After he was drawn into a lawsuit surrounding his non-fiction book Abinger Harvest, Forster "began to worry about libel dangers in his work on T. E. Lawrence, which indeed were considerable, and tried to extract a guarantee of immunity from the Lawrence trustees" (Furbank, p. 211). He could not be given these assurances, however, so gave up the project. David Garnett took over, drawing on Forster's initial editorial plans. As he writes in the preface, "I have had his friendly interest and, even more important, the use of all the notes he had made on the letters he had read. These have been of great moral assistance to me, fortifying my judgment and fingerposting the way. Yet it would be unfair for me to suggest, under the guise of gratitude, that this book is in any way his. I have completely changed the plan which he sketched out" (p. 31). The volume contains Lawrence's wide-ranging letters, including correspondence between Lawrence and his mother, E. M. Forster, Thomas Hardy, Ronald Storrs, Eric Kennington, B. H. Liddell Hart, and David George Hogarth. The earliest is dated August 1906 and the latest May 1935. It was the first and only major collection of letters until the supplementary title Home Letters of T. E. Lawrence and His Brothers was published in 1954. This copy is in the first state, with the errors at pages 182 and 495 reading "Baltic" rather than "Balkan" and "T.E.L." rather than "T.E.S.". O'Brien A202. Philip Furbank, E. M. Forster: A Life, 1977. A. W. Lawrence, Letters to T. E. Lawrence, 1962; Jodie Medd, "'I didn't know there could be such writing: The Aesthetic Intimacy of E. M. Forster and T. E. Lawrence'" in Queer Bloomsbury, 2016. Octavo. Original brown buckram, spine gilt-lettered direct, top edge orange, bottom edge untrimmed. With dust jacket. Half-tone photograph frontispiece, 15 plates, 2 folding maps with details in red and brown, illustrations in the text; title printed in black and red. Cloth fresh, spine head and foot lightly bumped, contents bright; jacket unclipped, spine toned and creased, joints and edges nicked and chipped with a few small closed tears, panels marked: a near-fine copy in very good jacket.