Military Report on the Sinai Peninsula, Copy #162 of the Castle Hill Press limited edition.
With notes on the Turkish frontier districts and the Wadi Araba, Prepared by T. E. Lawrence at the General Staff, War Office, 1914
Fordingbridge, Hampshire: Castle Hill Press, 2008. Limited Edition, finely bound, hand-numbered. Quarter goatskin. This limited edition is the first edition for public circulation, published by Castle Hill Press, the premier editors and fine press publishers of material by and about T. E. Lawrence, founded by Lawrence’s official biographer, Jeremy Wilson (1944-2017). This is copy is hand-numbered “162” of a total edition of 227 numbered copies, of which 150 were bound thus in quarter beige goatskin with cream canvas sides, the contents featuring gilt top edge, brown and white silk head and tail bands, brown satin ribbon marker, rear pastedown map pocket containing two color folding maps, and accompanied by a publisher's slipcase in matching cream canvas cloth, lined with tan felt. This copy is as-new, among the publisher's last copies, acquired by us directly from the publisher, the binding pristine, the contents immaculate.
Lawrence achieved fame from his remarkable odyssey as instigator, organizer, hero, and tragic figure of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. But the war he ended as “Lawrence of Arabia” began with Lawrence serving as an eccentric junior intelligence officer. Here is Lawrence before his fame.
From the publisher: “By the autumn of 1914, T. E. Lawrence and Leonard Woolley had completed The Wilderness of Zin – an archaeological report on their findings during a visit to the Sinai Peninsula the previous winter. Though Britain was now at war, there was a glut of volunteers and Lawrence had been unable to enlist. If Turkey sided with Germany, his knowledge of the Middle East would be useful - but during the early autumn Turkey remained neutral. He was offered temporary work in the Egyptian and Assyrian Department at the British Museum. On 21 October, with the help of D.G. Hogarth, he joined the Geographical Section of the General Staff. He spent the next few weeks at the War Office in Whitehall, first as a civilian and then as a Temporary 2nd Lieutenant-Interpreter. One of the section's urgent projects was to complete a set of 1/125,000 maps of northern Sinai. They incorporated survey work by the party of Royal Engineers that Lawrence and Woolley had accompanied in Sinai. Lawrence was given the task of helping to prepare these maps. When Turkey entered the war he expected an immediate posting to Cairo, but his commitments at GSGS took priority. In mid-November he wrote: 'I was to have gone to Egypt on Sat last: only the G.O.C. there wired to the W.O. and asked for a road-report on Sinai that they were supposed to have.’ The report was to cover the whole of northern Sinai. Lawrence had seen only part of that area during the Wilderness of Zin expedition... The new project involved producing a concise account of each route through northern Sinai, using travelers' reports and military surveys. Lawrence extracted facts and wrote précis of descriptions, noting distances, water supplies, and the physical difficulty of the routes… The area of Northern Sinai covered by the report extends from the Suez Canal in the west to the Wadi Araba in the east, and from Port Said, Rafa and Beersheba in the north to Suez, Themed and Akaba in the south. This rectangle of desert was of great concern to the British Headquarters in Egypt. Any Turkish force mounting an attack on the Suez Canal would have to cross it – as would any British advance into Palestine. Lawrence's Military Report on the Sinai Peninsula was printed in 1914 as a classified GSGS pocket-book. Very few copies are known to survive. Our printing is the first since 1914 and the first that is available to the public. We have modernised the typesetting house-style and corrected a considerable number of editing and typesetting errors in the hurried 1914 edition.”
Amusingly, initially Castle Hill Press committed an error of its own; initial copies featured the misprint “Penninsular” rather than “Peninsula” on the spine; happily this copy features a properly printed spine. Item #008629
Price: $950.00