|
T.E.
Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, "The story which follows was first written out in Paris during the Peace Conference, from notes jotted daily on the march, strengthened by some reports sent to my chiefs in Cairo. Afterwards, in the autumn of 1919, this first draft and some of the notes were lost. It seemed to me historically needful to reproduce the tale, as perhaps no one but myself in Feisal's army had thought of writing down at the time what we felt, what we hoped, what we tried. So it was built again with heavy repugnance in London in the winter of 1919-20 from memory and my surviving notes. The record of events was not dulled in me and perhaps few actual mistakes crept in--except in details of dates or numbers--but the outlines and significance of things had lost edge in the haze of new interests..."— Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Introduction "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (posthumous trade edition 1935, with subsequent editions since) remains one of the few 20th-century works in English to make epical figures out of contemporaries." — Britannica |
|
 |
Lawrence, T.E. Seven Pillars of Wisdom (The). London: Jonathan Cape, 1935. Quarto, original cloth, original dustjacket, 54 black & white illustrations; 4 folding maps. $1300. "Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven. By day the hot sun fermented us; and we were dizzied by the beating wind. At night we were stained by dew, and shamed into pettiness by the innumerable silences of stars. We were a self-centred army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man's creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that our earlier ambitions faded in its glare." — Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Chapter 1. First trade edition of Lawrence's remarkable memoirs of the Arab Revolt. An extraordinary work by one of the most extraordinary individuals to live in the 20th century. Book fine; dust jacket in excellent condition with light discoloration at tail of spine.
|