Books

Pp. [ii]+446, 19 plates (11 coloured, including the frontispiece portrait), the title page and folding map at end printed in red & black, index; tall post 4to; qr. brown pigskin, spine lettered in gilt, tan buckram boards, lightly soiled and faded, fore-corners a trifle worn, the spine slightly faded and rubbed; t.e.g., others uncut, a couple of leaves partly unopened; bookseller's sticker at foot of upper pastedown, inked ownership inscription (dated 1927) on upper free endpaper, the upper hinge cracked, small damp stain to both pastedowns, lacking tissue guards to the coloured plates, a little light foxing and occasional faint soiling; Jonathan Cape, London, 1927. One of 315 numbered large paper copies (300 for sale). O'Brien A101. *Lawrence had spared no expense in publication of the 1926 subscribers' edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. To recoup some of the costs he agreed to the publication of an abridged version of the book, retitled Revolt In the Desert. Chapters 1-7 were dropped completely, and other text was cut. Lawrence reserved the right to stop publication at any time, and once his debt had been cleared, he ordered that no more copies were to be printed. The trade edition contained 16 black & white plates. The large paper edition included 3 extra plates and a little additional text: 'Size of volume dictated by inclusion of coloured plates from 1926 Seven Pillars. In order to justify the inclusion of some of the persons represented in the plates and not otherwise mentioned in the text, a few paragraphs were added to the abridged text' [O'Brien p. 79].