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CATALOGUE

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Works

The Mint, 1928 text
Military Report on the Sinai Peninsula

Translation

The Forest Giant

Letters

T. E. Lawrence Letters series
Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw
Correspondence with E. M. Forster and F.L. Lucas
Correspondence with Henry Williamson

See our full catalogue

  Page updated
 12 November 2008

 

The T. E. Lawrence Letters series

The definitive edition of T. E. Lawrence's correspondence

Series Editor: Jeremy Wilson

History of the project

I first discussed the idea of a major scholarly edition of T.E. Lawrence's letters with his brother and literary executor A.W. Lawrence in the late 1960s. For years I tried to persuade commercial and university publishers to take on the project - but with no success.

Commercial publishers saw Lawrence mainly as a topic for sensational or controversial popular biographies. They didn't see a worthwhile market for more serious work.

Academics dislike the popular legend, but have done little to correct it. The problem is simple: Lawrence's career crossed too many academic demarcations. No university department feels that his entire life falls within its competence.

I might have abandoned the project, but in 1988 I edited Lawrence's Letters to E. T. Leeds for John Randle's Whittington Press. Its success showed a way to publish editions of letters without using third-party publishers. If my wife and I were willing to tackle the production and marketing – areas where we had some experience – we could set up a publishing company of our own. By selling direct, we could publish scholarly editions to standards that we, rather than a commercial publisher's finance director, thought fit. That would apply not only to the editing, but also to design, typesetting, paper, printing, and binding.

The first two volumes in our T.E. Lawrence Letters series appeared in 2000. In all, we plan to publish around twenty. The general pre-war, wartime, political and service volumes will be chronological. Other volumes will group the correspondence and collateral material for individual recipients.

There is unlikely to be another major edition of T. E. Lawrence's letters, so the editing takes account of the needs of future readers. Many of them will be far less familiar than we are today with the history of Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.

Each volume will make a valuable contribution to knowledge of both Lawrence and the other party to the correspondence. See below for a list of projected titles.

Jeremy Wilson

 

The T. E. Lawrence Letters series

This list is indicative. As the series progresses there may be changes to the content of some volumes

T. E. lawrence Letters series

   Vols I, II, III and IX

Letters to writers, publishers and artists

This series will contain Lawrence's known post-war literary correspondence. Volume-length will be approx. 220-400 pages. The first volumes were published in 2000.

Volume I: Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1922-1926 (Fordingbridge, Castle Hill Press, 2000)

Volume II: Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1927 (Fordingbridge, Castle Hill Press, 2003)

Volume III: Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1928
(Fordingbridge, Castle Hill Press, 2008)

Volume IV: Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1929-1935
(Fordingbridge, Castle Hill Press, 2009)

Volume V: Correspondence with E. M. Forster and F. L. Lucas
(Fordingbridge, Castle Hill Press, 2010)

Volume VI: More Correspondence with Writers, including John Brophy, John Buchan, Noel Coward, C. Day Lewis, C. M. Doughty, David Garnett, James Hanley, Mrs. Thomas Hardy, Frederic Manning, and Siegfried Sassoon

Volume VII: Correspondence with Bookmen including Jonathan Cape, Sydney Cockerell, C.J. Cumberlege, Peter Davies, F. N. Doubleday, Edward Garnett, St. John Hornby, Ralph Isham, Manning Pike, Bruce Rogers, Raymond Savage, Whittingham & Griggs, G. Wren Howard

Volume VIII: Correspondence with Robert Graves

Volume IX: Correspondence with Henry Williamson
(Fordingbridge, Castle Hill Press, 2000)

Volume X: Correspondence with Artists, including Herbert Baker, C.F. Bell, H.S. Ede, Eric Kennington, Augustus John, Paul Nash, William Roberts, William Rothenstein, and Kathleen Scott

The remaining volumes, some containing works as well as letters, will be published in the same volume format as Volumes I-X, but not numbered:

  • Letters, 1905-10 to his family and others, together with Lawrence's undergraduate thesis The Influence of the Crusades on European Military Architecture - to the end of the XIIth Century. Illustrated with photographs of castles visited by Lawrence
  • Letters from Carchemish, including letters to his family, D.G. Hogarth, E.T. Leeds, C. M. Doughty, James Elroy Flecker, and others, together with a selection of collateral documents
  • War Diaries and Letters, including Lawrence's surviving wartime diaries and notebooks, his reports and private correspondence, and significant references to him in wartime records
  • Political and Diplomatic Writings and Correspondence 1918-1922. Starting with letters and minutes written after his return to England in 1918, the volume will cover the 1919 Peace Conference, Lawrence's work in the Colonial Office with Winston Churchill, and his final diplomatic mission to the Middle East
  • Post-war Correspondence with Family and Advisers, including D.G. Hogarth, Robin Buxton, Lionel Curtis, Sarah Lawrence, A. W. Lawrence, John Snow and Edward Eliot
  • Correspondence with Journalists and Historians including R.D. Blumenfeld, Geoffrey Dawson, B.H. Liddell Hart, Lowell Thomas
  • General Post-War Correspondence, including letters to Nancy Astor, Lil Black, George Brough, Edward Elgar, Ernest Thurtle, and A.P. Wavell.
  • Service correspondence, including both official and personal letters to wartime, Tank Corps and RAF personnel - but excluding correspondence about his work on boats.
  • Boats for the R.A.F., 1931-1935, a volume containing correspondence and reports relating to Lawrence's work on R.AF. boats. The reports include his Notes on the 200 Class R.A.F. Seaplane Tender.  (To be published 2011)

 

Note: The revenue from volumes in the T.E. Lawrence Letters series has to cover not only the cost of producing and marketing the books, but also the cost of editorial research. The volumes are therefore more expensive than popular trade editions. We are very conscious of this - but there is no other solution. If revenue from the volumes failed to cover costs, the project would halt.

Nevertheless, for buyers the cost of volumes is a tiny fraction of the cost of securing accurate transcripts of the original letters and then doing all the editorial research and indexing. Our indexer Hazel Bell won Britain's top indexing award, the Wheatley Medal, for her index of our 1922 Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

The quality of Castle Hill Press editions has been highly praised. Each title is offered on a subscription basis for a set period before publication, and thereafter by direct sale. See FAQs for general information on Castle Hill Press publishing.

 



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