T. E. Lawrence: Correspondence With Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1922-1935, complete in four volumes.
#347 of 475 total sets and 150 bound thus, in quarter cloth
Fordingbridge, Hampshire: Castle Hill Press, 2000. First, limited, and hand-numbered edition. Hardcover. This four-volume set publishes T. E. Lawrence's correspondence with George Bernard and Charlotte Shaw between 1922 and 1935. Hailed by Lawrence scholars, "publication… of four expertly edited volumes of Lawrence's correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw has... dramatically enriched our knowledge of what Lawrence was thinking and doing from 1922 to 1935, and also arouses, in any objective reader, considerable sympathy for him." These comprise the first volumes in the T. E. Lawrence Letters series published by Castle Hill Press, once the premier editors and fine press publishers of material by and about T. E. Lawrence, headed by Lawrence’s official biographer, Jeremy Wilson (1944-2017).
This set features quarter oatmeal cloth bindings over green paper-covered boards with deep green Morocco spine panels stamped in gilt with author, title, and volume number. The contents are bound with white and green silk head and tail bands, green-stained top edges, and tan endpapers. This set is hand-numbered “347” on the Volume IV limitation statement. We acquired this set directly from the publisher. Condition is as new, the bindings and contents pristine.
Published between 2000 and 2009, these four volumes are the only complete publication of these letters. Castle Hill Press originally planned to issue 702 sets, but ultimately issued only 475, explaining disparity between the limitation statements in the first and final volumes. Limitation numbers appear only in the fourth and final volume issued to original subscribers. Of the 475 sets, the publisher informed us “150 sets were bound in quarter cloth.”
T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935) found fame as instigator, organizer, hero, and tragic figure of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, which he began as an eccentric junior intelligence officer and ended as "Lawrence of Arabia." Lawrence spent the rest of his famously short life struggling at turns to reconcile, recount, and repress his indelible experience and celebrity. Lawrence first met George Bernard (1856-1950) and Charlotte Payne-Townshend Shaw (1857-1943) in March 1922. Lawrence was in a state of nervous exhaustion following the First World War, his work on the post-war settlement, and writing and re-writing Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Thereafter, the Shaws played an integral role in Lawrence's literary and personal life.
In George Bernard Shaw - "the unorthodox, testy, argumentative agent provocateur and gadfly of British life and conventions" - perhaps Lawrence recognized someone whose persona had overtaken the man. In Charlotte Shaw, Lawrence found "a kind of alternate mother figure" and a lifelong correspondent and confidante. Suggesting the complex importance of the Shaws to Lawrence, by early 1923 Lawrence had enlisted in the Army under the name "Thomas Edward Shaw." He used, and published under, this assumed surname until his death.
With her revulsion toward physical intimacy, Charlotte was perhaps uniquely suited to understand Lawrence's complex feelings of mortification over the infamous incident at Deraa. "Lawrence was more frank about himself with her than with anyone else..." For her part, "there was much about herself that Charlotte hid from her husband, including the sheer volume and intimacy of her correspondence with Lawrence... which shocked the normally imperturbable Shaw when he discovered it after her death." (Korda, p.657) Wilson states that Charlotte "preserved almost all the letters she had received [from Lawrence] - over 300, some very long" and she recovered several she had written to Lawrence. "The correspondence adds up to almost twice the total length of his letters to any other recipient... Lawrence's correspondence with the Shaws between 1922 and 1935 is the most significant series of his post-war letters to survive. It covers an extraordinary variety of topics and, for much of the time, the letters were so frequent that they provide something akin to a diary." Item #008505
Price: $1,750.00