Letters Intro

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 may 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. A list of projected titles is given below.

Jeremy Wilson

The T. E. Lawrence Letters series

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

Fine-press series, 29cm.

This series will contain most of Lawrence's post-war literary correspondence. Volume-length will be approx. 220-280 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)

To be published in 2008 Volume III: Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1928

Planned for 2009 Volume IV: Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, May 1929-1935

Planned for 2009 Volume V: Correspondence with E. M. Forster, F. L. Lucas and Frederic Manning

Volume VI: Correspondence with Edward Garnett and David Garnett

Volume VII: Correspondence with Robert Graves

Volume VIII: Correspondence with John Brophy, John Buchan, Mrs. Thomas Hardy, and Siegfried Sassoon

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

Volume X: Miscellaneous Literary Correspondence, including letters to John Brophy, John Buchan, C. Day Lewis, C. M. Doughty, James Hanley, Noel Coward

Subscribers' Library Editions 24cm.

These substantial volumes, designed and printed to high standards and bound in good-quality cloth, will contain Lawrence's general correspondence. They will be similar in format to the Subscribers' Library Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, The Complete 1922 Text (2003). The volume-length will be 325-700 pages. In some cases there may also be a small trade edition published by J and N Wilson.

Volume XI: Letters, 1905-10 to his family and others. Profusely illustrated with photographs of castles visited by Lawrence.

Volume XII: Letters from Carchemish including letters to his family, D.G. Hogarth, E. T. Leeds, C. M. Doughty, James Elroy Flecker, and others, together with collateral documents.

Volume XIII: 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.

Volume XIV: Political and Diplomatic Correspondence 1918-1922. Starting with letters and minutes written after his return to England in the 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.

Volume XV: Service correspondence, 1922-35, including both official and personal letters to wartime, Tank Corps and RAF personnel. The volume will give a remarkable picture of Lawrence's career in the ranks.

Volume XVI: Correspondence with Advisers. D. G. Hogarth, Robin Buxton, Lionel Curtis, John Snow and Edward Eliot. Important letters to some of Lawrence's closest post-war advisers.

Volume XVII: Correspondence with Printers and Publishers: Jonathan Cape, Sydney Cockerell, C. J. Cumberlege, Peter Davies, F. N. Doubleday, St. John Hornby, Ralph Isham, Bruce Rogers, Raymond Savage, and others. These letters trace Lawrence's involvement with publishing, and contain much information about the three books published during his lifetime (The Forest Giant, Revolt in The Desert, The Odyssey of Homer) as well as various prefaces and introductions.

Volume XVIII: The world of Art. Herbert Baker, C.F. Bell, H.S. Ede, Eric Kennington, Augustus John, Paul Nash, William Roberts, William Rothenstein, and Kathleen Scott.

Volume XIX: Correspondence with Women: Nancy Astor, Lil Black, F.E. Hardy and others, including post-war letters to his mother, Sarah Lawrence.

Volume XX: Correspondence with Journalists and Historians. R.D. Blumenfeld, Geoffrey Dawson, B. H. Liddell Hart, Lowell Thomas

Volume XXI: General Post-War Correspondence. George Brough, Edward Elgar, Ernest Thurtle, A.P. Wavell and others.

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 Help-FAQs for further details.

Castle Hill Press Scholarly editions of T. E. Lawrence's works and letters

Castle Hill Press
Scholarly editions of T. E. Lawrence's works and letters