First publishing plans

Over 50 illustrations had been completed towards the end of 1922, and in the face of this the inevitability of some form of publication increased - 'and the motive will be money, from which I have hitherto steered clear.' (1)

Bernard Shaw had meanwhile read some of the text, under the persuasion of his wife Charlotte, who had quickly proclaimed it a masterpiece, and he replied with some favourable comments, having indeed gone so far as to promote the idea of its publication with Constables. However, with Garnett's Cape connections it was always more likely that any publishing contract would go there. In December 1922 Cape offered a £7,000 advance under a contract for an abridgement. The agreement had been negotiated by Raymond Savage, a wartime colleague of Lawrence, who was now manager for his newly acquired literary agent, Curtis Brown.

Then on 27th December The Daily Express newspaper splashed across its front and centre pages a sensational scoop on the true identity of A/C Ross under the headline '"Uncrowned king" as private soldier'. The speculation this aroused was to fill the pages of the popular national press for weeks, and, appalled at the realisation of the further publicity which would result from publishing even an impersonal abridgement of his story for public consumption, Lawrence called off the deal with Cape, a decision reinforced by Bernard Shaw's strongly expressed opinion in December that the book should be published in its entirely.

Lawrence then proposed to Cape the idea of a privately printed, illustrated edition, limited to 2,000 copies. After the initial shock of this suggestion, Cape rose to the occasion and drew up a new contract which included serialisation of some of the book in The Observer. This reached Lawrence on the day he was thrown out of the RAF. It was all too much. He panicked once again, refused to sign, and left Cape to fume.

Meanwhile Shaw continued to send helpful suggestions and comments - 'As to style, what have you to do with such dilettanti rubbish, any more than I have? You have something to say; and you say it as accurately and vividly as you can; and when you have done that you do not go fooling with your statement with the notion that if you do it over again five or six times you will do it five or six times better. You get it set up, and correct its inevitable slips in proof. Then you get a revise and go over your corrections to see that they fit in properly and that you have not dropped one stitch in mending another. Then you pass for press; and there you are.' (2)

There you are, indeed, if you are G B Shaw, but not if you happen to be T E Shaw, the name under which, in early March 1923, and with the help of friends at the War Office, Lawrence joined the Royal Tank Corps. He signed on for seven years, and was sent to Bovington Camp in Dorset.

Bernard Shaw had at last made considerable headway with his reading of the mammoth tome. In a postcard to Sydney Cockerell [13th April 1923, from the Hotel Metropole, Minehead], he wrote 'I havnt finished Lawrence's book yet. It is about twice as long as the Bible; and I had first to wait until Charlotte finished it, and then take it in short nightly doses down at Ayot; for it is too bulky to be carried about and read in trains. The result is that I have about forty pages still to read when I get back to Ayot in the second week in May. It is one of the great books of our time; and I must finish it to the last morsel.' (3)

In August 1923 Gertrude Bell wrote to Lawrence, urging on him the possibility of publishing - for one thing she wanted to read the book, and no copy of the printed text was available! In response to a similar request from Kathleen Scott earlier in the year, Lawrence had replied 'You want a copy! Unfortunately so do I. Of the six copies which exist only one has ever been returned by a borrower: and that copy was foolishly lent a second time, and hasn't come back. So as a fact I want six copies. Do you think D.G.H. would trust you with the loan of his? Shaw apparently won't; Kennington has lent his to Clutton Brock. Garvin has one. A colonel called Bartholomew in the War Office has one: and I forget where the sixth is.' (4)

1	L 172, Eric Kennington, 27.X.22
2	Letters to, 4.i.23, p 169
3	T E Lawrence Collection, University of Texas, quoted by Ann Bowden in Texas Quarterly, Vol V, No 3, Autumn 1962, p 62
4	L 193, 5.2.23

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The writing of Seven Pillars of Wisdom - full listing