Books

Second US edition, O'Brien's "gift issue" for Christmas 1927, of Lawrence's abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. This was modelled on the first British edition, containing line cuts from the 1926 version not present elsewhere and featuring endpapers designed by Eric Kennington. Revolt in the Desert was officially published in both limited and trade issues on 10 March 1927 in England and 19 days later in the US. "Three [English] impressions were soon sold out and two more quickly followed in a period of four months. The number of copies in print exceeded 90,000. The fifth impression was the last as Lawrence exercised his right to stop publication at any time. Once his debt had been cleared he ordered that no more copies were to be printed. The profits from this publication made the fortunes of the Cape publishing house, enabling them to set aside a large reserve" (O'Brien). "Sales in America astonished no one more than the publisher, George H. Doran, who concluded that Lawrence 'had a capacity for a superbly arrogant modesty that brought him into a limelight that would have gratified the soul of P. T. Barnum as one of the great publicity triumphs of all time.' When Lawrence had set the price of the American copyright Seven Pillars at $20,000 a copy, he cannot have guessed how Doran would use it: [Doran wrote that] 'never was better publishing publicity conceived. the public flocked to buy the slightly abridged. book for $3'" (Wilson, pp. 791-792). The origins of Revolt in the Desert lie in Lawrence's perilous financial situation in 1925 and his commercial acumen. The cost of producing Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) was ballooning to such an extent - from �3,000 to �13,000 - that Lawrence was ready to sell either his library or some personal effects to defray this outlay. Eventually, however, he decided to raise money through an abridged version, editing the full text to reduce the contents by a third. "Lawrence felt that in Seven Pillars he had failed to create a work of the 'titanic' class: his aim in the abridgement was more modest and therefore more attainable. There was magnificent material in Seven Pillars for an uncomplicated adventure story, and Lawrence was determined to succeed" (Wilson, p. 768). O'Brien A108. Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorised Biography of T. E. Lawrence, 1989. Octavo. Original brown buckram, spine gilt-lettered direct, pictorial endpapers, top edge brown, others untrimmed. Half-tone photographic frontispiece after Augustus John's drawing of Lawrence, 23 plates (1 folding), folding map in red and black, illustrations in text. Cloth fresh, front cover top edge slightly bumped, contents bright, folding plate slightly creased at edge, folding map repaired on verso: a very good copy.