Books

First edition, number 16 of 30 copies bound in pigskin and with a six-page facsimile of part of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom manuscript, this copy with the publisher's bookplate. "The majority of Lawrence's contributions to the Arab Bulletin are published in this volume. In addition to these items, 'Syrian Cross Currents', previously unpublished, is included; this was taken from a manuscript on Arab Bureau paper" (O'Brien). The Arab Bureau's confidential bulletin, founded at Lawrence's instigation shortly after his return to Cairo from Mesopotamia, summarized developments in the Near East and supplemented the intelligence bulletin circulated by the General Staff of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Contributors included Lawrence (who also edited the first nine issues), Gertrude Bell, David Hogarth, and others, as well as officials in Jeddah and Egypt. It "included regional political and personality profiles in addition to military assessments of troop strength, dispositions, and movements, often accompanied by firsthand accounts of fighting in Arabia by British observers. Reaction to developments in Arabia from throughout the Muslim world were also carefully monitored in the Bulletin" (Westrate, p. 103). Publication began on 6 June 1916 and the circulation was initially only 26 copies. The final instalment, number 114, was issued on 13 August 1919. Secret Despatches from Arabia, the first commercial appearance of Lawrence's reports for the bulletin, includes 37 articles first printed between 8 November 1916 and 22 October 1918, including those with bylines and those subsequently identified by Lawrence as his. Also reproduced in full is "Syrian Cross Currents", Lawrence's thoughtful 1918 essay on regional geopolitics, after a manuscript in the possession of his brother. The task of writing for the bulletin alongside other intelligence forums soon left Lawrence feeling "written out, for now I have two newspapers (both secret!) to edit, for the information of Governors and Governments, and besides heaps of writing to do:- and it is enough" (quoted in Wilson, p. 287). The edition also included 970 copies bound in quarter niger. Cock-a-Hoop P145; O'Brien A226. Bruce C. Westrate, Arab Bureau: British Policy in the Middle East, 1916-1920, 2010; Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia, 1989. Large octavo. Original white pigskin by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, raised bands, spine lettered in gilt, publisher's gilt device at foot of spine, spine ends, board edges, and turn-ins tooled in gilt, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Housed in publisher's tan cloth slipcase, numbered in gilt at head. Collotype frontispiece after photograph of Lawrence by B. E. Leeson, 6-page collotype reproduction of three chapters from the manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom; text in Perpetua type. A few marks to leather and touch of handling wear to leather, contents clean: a fine copy in the well-preserved slipcase, some sunning and foxing.