T. E. Lawrence: The Selected Letters

Profiles the enigmatic soldier, statesman, and man of letters, offering a wealth of never-before-published missives that shed light on his role in the Arab revolt, his sexuality, and his retreat into obscurity

Although he regarded letter-writing as "a bad habit," Lawrence of Arabia (Thomas Edward Lawrence, 1888-1935) wrote and received thousands of letters. Once he left the Middle East, he led a "comparatively empty" life, so his letters served as a lifeline to the outside world. Even his routine, casual notes were carefully crafted. Unlike the collections of 1938 and 1954, this is unexpurgated, containing many letters previously unavailable even to biographers, addressing correspondents such as E. M. Forster, Noel Coward, Ezra Pound, Augustus John and Charlotte (Mrs. G. B.) Shaw, Lawrence's most trusted epistolary confidant. Also included is much previously unpublished material about Lawrence during WW I, about his sexuality and about his state of mind in the last weeks of his life. Each letter is briefly but carefully annotated; none have been censored, even though Lawrence himself felt that they should not be held up to scrutiny by the public. The book is a major literary work.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The dashing, enigmatic Lawrence of Arabia--"scholar, archaeologist, soldier, diplomat, author, international celebrity"--was born 101 years ago. Two-thirds of this generous selection of his correspondence has never been published before. The over 300 letters to Mrs. George Bernard Shaw, printed here for the first time, are especially fascinating, as are the letters to E.M. Forster and Robert Graves. The new material bears significantly on the three great questions concerning Lawrence of Arabia: the role he played in the Arab Revolt, the nature of his sexuality, and the reasons that from 1922 onward he chose a life of relative obscurity. This edition seeks a popular rather than scholarly audience: not all the texts have been checked against the originals and numerous letters are printed in incomplete versions.
- Keith Cushman, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.