Contents lists
T. E. Lawrence to Bruce Rogers
R.A.F.
Miranshah,
India.
2/X/28
Dear B. R.
Your letter came yesterday. I can't answer it today, when the post goes. It is very wholesomely long, wants thinking over. This note is only to say that I will accept the very good terms and conditions you have made for me. You have been exceedingly careful of my interests and liberal towards my pocket.
I'll write in the ensuing week to Emery Walker (whom I don't know, of course: it's rather a shock to address public monuments like him and yourself and find them speaking back!) accepting his letters and promising to produce the instalments as soon as I can. You will not find me difficult about roofs, or a person who corrects much. Pike, who re-composed the Seven Pillars, from the galleys which the Monotype Co. sent in, was a jewel of a compositor: he used to alter and re-arrange the words in my sentences, so as to make them fit the pages and lines. Therefore I had no trouble at all. What the author writes is like a bar of soap; you can cut it off anywhere, and it's all soap, all through.
The only addition I'll make to your draft is to add a clause in which the publishers (and yourself as copyright owner for possible publication elsewhere) agree not to publish my name (any of my names!) in conjunction with this English edition, anyhow, without my permission, while I live.
Post is going: and I'm going - into the air.
Till next week
Yours
T E Shaw
| Source: | BR1 [22-23] |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 5 July 2006 |
T. E. Lawrence chronology
1888 16 August: born at Tremadoc, Wales
1896-1907: City of Oxford High School for Boys
1907-9: Jesus College, Oxford, B.A., 1st Class Hons, 1909
1910-14: Magdalen College, Oxford (Senior Demy), while working at the British Museum's excavations at Carchemish
1915-16: Military Intelligence Dept, Cairo
1916-18: Liaison Officer with the Arab Revolt
1919: Attended the Paris Peace Conference
1919-22: wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1921-2: Adviser on Arab Affairs to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office
1922 August: Enlisted in the Ranks of the RAF
1923 January: discharged from the RAF
1923 March: enlisted in the Tank Corps
1923: translated a French novel, The Forest Giant
1924-6: prepared the subscribers' abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1927-8: stationed at Karachi, then Miranshah
1927 March: Revolt in the Desert, an abridgement of Seven Pillars, published
1928: completed The Mint, began translating Homer's Odyssey
1929-33: stationed at Plymouth
1931: started working on RAF boats
1932: his translation of the Odyssey published
1933-5: attached to MAEE, Felixstowe
1935 February: retired from the RAF
1935 19 May: died from injuries received in a motor-cycle crash on 13 May
1935 21 May: buried at Moreton, Dorset