Title page

There is no half-title page, disregarding the usual convention in book production, and the title page bears no author's name, which is definitely very unusual. When Liddell Hart commented on this in the manuscript of his biography T E Lawrence in Arabia and After, Lawrence wrote in the margin 'typog', and subsequently explained that the name was left out for typographical reasons - because the title page looked more effective without it. (1) In the published version of his book, Liddell Hart quotes what was presumably Lawrence's verbal explanation - that it looked 'cleaner' - and so, although his name had originally been printed on the title page, he had rejected it in proof. The hand-written title page of the Bodleian manuscript bears the initials 'TEL'.

An indication that it was rather more than a typographical problem for him is given in a note to Bernard Shaw which accompanied Cape's draft contract in March 1925 - 'By the way, what name shall I call myself in it?' The only printed author identification in the book, the initials T.E.S. [for T E Shaw, the name assumed by Lawrence in 1923], appears at the foot of the preface on p [VI], [text as p [6], tr ed]. Thus the only information on the title page is: SEVEN PILLARS/OF/WISDOM/a triumph/1926.

1	Biog LH, p 158

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