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Some past postings from Programme Updates Page
contents Several people have asked for a long-term view of the Letters series. It is easy to forget that, while we are best-known for our Seven Pillars editions, the reason we set up Castle Hill Press was to publish the Letters series. In essence, Lawrence's correspondence divides into two parts. One - perhaps the part he enjoyed most - was correspondence with writers and artists. The other was what you might call general and professional correspondence. Thus far, we have published three of the projected 'writers' volumes. Three more are at an advanced stage. Once these are issued, the writers series will be over half way through its scope, as currently proposed. (We may reconsider whether some other correspondences should be issued in this format.) In 2009 we hope to publish the first of the 'general' volumes: T.E. Lawrence's Letters from Carchemish. In future, this will be the key source for his formative years. It is one of four volumes in the series where the arrangement will be chronological.1
As the 'general' volumes will be much longer than the 'writers' volumes, they will be published in a different format. This is the format we pioneered with the Subscribers' Library Edition of the 1922 Seven Pillars. The proposed series list is here Notes: 2. The others will be Youth: 1905-10; War Diaries and Letters, and Lawrence's post-war service correspondence 10 April 2004 A note on 'series subscriptions' Many people have told us that they wish to have their order entered automatically for each new Letters series volume. We experimented with this concept, in what we called 'series subscribers'. In the event, however, we found that:
The only solution is to keep in touch. Hence the News page and the optional e-mail newsletters to which you can subscribe through our online shop. Another important communications channel is the 'Update Subscriber Information' item in the online shop. That allows you to send us address and card changes over a secure server. 10 April 2004, updated January 2007 T. E. Lawrence, The Pre-War Letters The project now looming is Letters from Carchemish. This, the first of the longer Letters series volumes, will be published in the Library Edition format. At present, we have only a rough idea of its length - probably somewhere between 500 and 700 pages. We need a more accurate estimate in order to get production prices and calculate the subscription. So I have been compiling typesetting files from transcripts we already hold, and noting material that needs adding. That will take a while to complete. We aim to make this volume a comprehensive source for Lawrence's writing between his voyage out to Syria at the end of 1910 and the beginning of the war in 1914. The arrangement will be chronological, including:
Wherever possible, the letter texts are being checked or re-checked to eliminate, for example, the many transcription errors and silent omissions that mar The Home Letters of T.E. Lawrence and his Brothers. In terms of outlook, the letters from Carchemish are hugely different to those Lawrence wrote in the 1920s - proof, if any were needed, of the extent to which the war affected his life. Considered as letters, they are often remarkable. Will anything equivalent survive from the present? 29 May 2004 I have long felt that Lawrence's letters from Carchemish are among the most interesting that survive. Taken together, those to his family (published in a corrupt form in 1954), to D.G. Hogarth, to E.T. Leeds and to other friends give an extremely interesting portrait of the man whose actions during subsequent years would bring him world-wide fame. We are fortunate that so may of these letters survive. In them, Lawrence provides a vivid picture of life on an archaeological excavation in the early 1900s. John Mack, from the viewpoint of a professional psychiatrist, saw these pre-war letters as an invaluable insight into Lawrence's formative years. When John last spoke on Lawrence, just before his untimely death in 2004, he once again lamented the lack of an accurate and properly edited edition. The letters to all recipients will be presented in a single chronological series (the letters home and the letters to Leeds have already been published in separate volumes). Because of its length, Letters from Carchemish will be in the same format as our 2003 Seven Pillars Library Edition. In addition to the correspondence, it will contain information from British Museum archives that puts the letters in context, and a selection from the hundreds of photographs that Lawrence took while working on the site. I am particularly grateful to Peter Hibbert for volunteering to help edit the volume. Though now a professor of law, Peter trained and worked for a decade as an archaeologist and is a speaker at this autumn's T.E. Lawrence Symposium. He will be the principal editor of the Letters series volume covering Lawrence's earlier castle-hunting journeys in England and France. I would also like to welcome the support for the project offered by current British Museum staff. We have already started work on the Carchemish volume, typesetting the letter texts to page format, and beginning the demanding task of checking them where possible against the originals, correcting the errors and omissions in the edition of the Home Letters produced by Bob Lawrence, and considering what editorial and collateral material is needed, and where. The work will continue in parallel with the remaining editorial work on Lawrence-Shaw 1928 and on the final volume in the Lawrence-Shaw set, covering the years 1929-35. Summer 2007 |
