Castle Hill Press

Our two editions of The Mint and Later Writings about Service Life are slowly working their way through out-of-house production. Meanwhile, we are tackling the next projects.

The first is Lawrence's Correspondence with E. M. Forster [and others], which will be Volume V of the T. E. Lawrence Letters series. The bulk of the text has been typeset, and we are currently adding notes and checking. We hope to complete editorial work around mid-May and publish during the summer. This volume, the sixth to be published in the Letters series, will take us past the half-way point in the large-format volumes (see list)

The main title for the second half of the year will be The 200 Class R.A.F. Seaplane Tender. Our edition will include not only Lawrence's handbook, but also a selection of documents and correspondence about his work on RAF speed-boats.

In the background, we are also assembling Letters from Carchemish. This is a complicated project, which we do not expect to complete in time for publication in 2010. The collateral material available will enable us to present Lawrence's letters in the context of fuller information about the excavations. As a result, the book will provide a vivid picture of this pre-WWI archaeological expedition, so different from the kind of archaeology practised today.

T. E. Lawrence, The Mint and Later Writings About Service Life

Update 1 March

While we are waiting for the books to be finished, I thought this might be a good time to look back on our editorial objectives and the design of our two editions.

Editorial work

The easier of the two editorial tasks, in many ways, was the 1928 text of The Mint. We took as our starting-point the 1955 text, already on disk for the forthcoming print-on-demand paperback. We checked this against a photocopy of the manuscript given by Lawrence to Edward Garnett (now in the Houghton Library, Harvard). This process was more interesting than I had expected. First, it showed much about the thought-process behind Lawrence's later amendments, and therefore about his craftsmanship as a writer. Secondly, it drew our attention to a few words which seem to have been mistranscribed in the 1955 version. For example, at the end of Part I, Chapter 22 in the 1955 printing A.W. Lawrence added a footnote to the effect that while TEL habitually spelled the word 'irk' with an 'i', at the end of this chapter he had written it 'urk'. When we checked the 1928 manuscript, however, we found that TEL spelled it 'irk' on this and every other occurrence.

That seemed odd, since AWL was a scrupulous editor. The 'urk' error must have been in the source that he used for the 1955 typesetting. What was that source? It cannot have been the 1928 manuscript, where the error is not present - and in any case it had been sold to a private collector in the US some years previosuly. Nor can it have been the 50-copy edition of the 1928 Mint text printed by Doubleday in 1936, when the manuscript was sold. There, too, 'irk' in Chapter 22 is correct.

It seems that AWL's source for the 1955 Mint (which was typeset in the late 1940s) was a copy of the Doubleday printing that he marked up with amendments made by TEL in two typed transcripts. If so, a transcription error in the typescript found its way into the 1955 printed edition. It is not surprising if there are a few transcription errors in the typed copies, since the 1928 manuscript is, in places, quite difficult to read.

What was the history of the typescripts? There was a first copy (with carbons) made as a precaution in 1928. It was followed by at least one further re-typing. The further copies were second-generation, made from the first typescript rather than the manuscript, so an error in that first typescript would probably be present in later versions. As noted above, TEL owned and at different times corrected two of these typescripts. Wouldn't he have spotted any mistranscriptions? On the evidence of the 1922 manuscript of Seven Pillars of Wisdom and his corrected copy if the 1922 Oxford Times proof printing, the answer is no. On that occasion he picked up most of the errors, but not all. That is why we checked some words we found difficult to read in the 1928 manuscript of The Mint against Lawrence's earlier working draft, now in the British Library.

Our other task was to extract descriptions of service life from letters Lawrence wrote between January 1927 (after the end of The Mint) and his retirement from the RAF in 1935. The result was a kind of diary, interesting as a narrative, and also because combing through published and unpublished material brought to light some points I had not previously noted. For example, when Lawrence was sent back from work on speed-boats to normal station duties in September 1932 (following a sensational account of his service role in the Sunday Chronicle) he quickly became bored. One option seemed to be a transfer to 601 Squadron, based at Hendon. This had the attraction of proximity to London. However, he then discovered that a key figure at Hendon was Guilfoyle, the officer who had been responsible for his dismissal from R.A.F. Farnborough in 1923. It would be too much of a risk to serve under Guilfoyle again. When he realised that this avenue was closed he decided to resign from the service altogether, which he tried to do in April 1933.

Some biographers - particularly intellectuals without much practical bent - have seen Lawrence's service years as nihilist drudgery. This impression has been strengthened by editions of The Mint, where the brief section on Cranwell seems too contrived to be altogether sincere. It fails (as Lawrence recognised) to counterbalance his gruelling account of the recruits' training course at Uxbridge.

In our edition, Lawrence's later writings about the R.A.F. almost double the length of the book. They show his psychological recovery after 1927 and the real satisfaction he derived from his later RAF work. Adding this material about his later service years transforms The Mint - as Lawrence himself hoped to do in his still-born project Confession of Faith.

Design

The two editions presented different design challenges. In each case, the page format was pre-determined.

Large-format edition

In the large-format edition, designed to accompany our 1997 Seven Pillars and more recent large-format editions such as Towards 'An English Fourth', we had space for fairly generous typography. For example, each chapter of The Mint begins on a new page. Rather than summarise Lawrence's comments about The Mint in the introduction, we decided to include the relevant passages from many of his letters discussing The Mint in a 38-page appendix.

One slightly eccentric decision was to print the Uxbridge section of The Mint (Parts I and II) on pale grey paper. This draws a visual distinction between the part of the book that Lawrence wrote from contemporary notes and the third section, on Cranwell, which he wrote largely from other sources. That said, he did have a few contemporary notes for Part III. We have included the original texts of four of them in the supplement to the full-goatskin copies.

We looked at colours of cloth and goatskin and concluded, first, that no goatskin close to RAF blue was available, and, secondly, that RAF blue would in any case not be a good colour for the binding. Instead, we opted for dark greys. We also abandoned our initial idea of gilding the top edge (except in the full-goatskin copies), in order to reveal the different paper-colour used for the Uxbridge section.

The question of illustrations for this large-format edition was difficult. The power of the book is Lawrence's descriptive writing. In principle, any illustration would detract from that. Likewise, there seemed no justification for including manuscript facsimiles: we did not do that in our 1922 Seven Pillars. In the end, we decided to include a frontispiece sketch only: a 1929 head of Aircraftman T.E. Shaw by Augustus John.

Library Edition

When adapting this text to the smaller Library Edition format, we faced the same problems as when adapting our 1997 Seven Pillars to the 2003 Library Edition. In particular, we needed to reduce the page-count - which is not easy!

Reducing the font-size from 12pt to 11pt helps - but as the type-panel in the Library Edition format is also smaller, the number of words on a page is not greatly different. We gained some space by running the chapters head-to-tail, as in the Library Edition of Seven Pillars. Other ways of saving space included putting the dates of the later writings in their opening line, rather than the line above, and replacing the appendix of Lawrence's letters about The Mint with a historical introduction. These tactics brought the total text-length down from 352 pages in the large-format edition to just under 300 pages in the Library Edition format - almost 50 pages longer than stated in the prospectus. For practical reasons, the page-count of the Library Edition must be divisible by 32, so we set the length at 288 pages. We could have achieved that by further reducing the font size, but smaller type is less easy to read. Instead, we slightly trimmed our selection of the later writings about service life.

As with the 2003 Library Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, The Complete 1922 Text, we included a selection of photographs as illustrations.

Design Notes

Jeremy Wilson

Revised, 4 November 2009

During the past twelve years we have published sixteen volumes. Their content totals about 1.8 million words. Most of these volumes were issued in more than one binding, and most contain some form of illustration.

Each publication - and each of its variants - reflects numerous decisions about appearance, materials and production. I have occasionally commented here on the design of a particular book. This posting is the introduction to a series that will look at each of our books, discussing the design and production decisions that shaped it.

First principles

Although I learned letterpress printing at school, my main career was as a writer and editor rather than a printer or publisher. My thinking about book design is strongly influenced by that background. Book designers with other backgrounds may reach different conclusions - and these notes aren't intended to be prescriptive. My purpose here is simply to show that our design thinking stems from reasoning, not from accident or hunch.

I believe that the fundamental purpose of a book is to preserve and communicate information (which could be any kind of text or graphic). I do not believe that the physical form of a book should push that fundamental purpose into second place. If that happens, the result loses its moral claim to be a book, though it may become an art object of some different kind.

I nevertheless believe that a reader's appreciation of text and illustrations can be enhanced if a book is well designed and produced, just as a painting can be enhanced by a well designed frame.

We assemble and edit most of the texts we publish at Castle Hill Press, so we are in some measure responsible for both picture and frame. The challenge we face is to optimise both - without creating a frame so showy that it dominates. Designing books for readers often calls for restraint.

Some basic principles apply to all the books we publish. To avoid repetition, I will list them here.

1. Production values

T. E. Lawrence loved and collected fine-press books. His copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer, bound by T. J. Cobden Sanderson, is now a treasure of Queen's University, Ontario. His library included Kelmscott titles on vellum, a Doves Press Bible, and other magnificent books that few people today can afford to own.

In our edition of Lawrence's works and letters we aim for the highest-quality production we can achieve, without abandoning the requirement that (except for very small printings) a 'standard' version of our books, available on advance subscription, must be represent fair value to a scholar or library. This is because many people buy our books primarily for their content.

Given the length of the texts we publish, this constraint has ruled out letterpress printing. However, we are watching with interest technical developments that might allow us to transpose our typesetting to metal after we have hand-adjusted it on a computer.

2. Design in relation to content
The quality and appearance of a book ought to be appropriate to its content. That's obvious enough, but not too helpful. It doesn't imply any particular style. You might present a nineteenth-century text in an avant-garde setting, and that might work very well. In architecture, such juxtapositions are commonplace - and often successful.

In this case, we are publishing the works and letters of T.E. Lawrence, who had well-informed opinions about book design. These were based on his own ambition to run a private press, on a wide knowledge of the trade and fine-press editions of his day, and on his experience producing the subscribers' edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He could and did discuss book design and production with experts such as Sydney Cockerell, St. John Hornby, Bruce Rogers and Emery Walker, as well as design-conscious trade publishers like Peter Davies and Jonathan Cape's partner G. Wren Howard.

Lawrence's writings date from the 1920s and 1930s, which was a distinguished period in British publishing. We therefore decided at the outset that our designs should be inspired by the kind of book that Lawrence knew.

3. Illustration

We publish scholarly editions of long non-fiction texts. Many of these call for specific illustrations - portraits, contemporary photographs of places, maps, images referred to in the text, or facsimiles of manuscripts.

Should we also commission new imaginative illustrations for our books? Lawrence himself did that for his subscription edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, using the work of artists rather than the large collection of wartime photographs he had amassed. That said, many of the illustrations he commissioned were portraits of participants in the Arab Revolt or scenes adapted from photographs.

We considered commissioning illustrations but, after much thought, decided against it. In these volumes we are publishing letters and texts from a defined historical period. If appropriate, we can (and do) illustrate them with relevant art from that period. However, we feel that modern illustrations would be out of place. Their only purpose would be to give the books an artistic cachet. The modern contribution to our books lies elsewhere - in the editing and notes.

4. Durability

Most of our books contain previously unpublished writing, and few are likely to be reprinted in a hardback edition. Copies belonging to libraries and researchers may be read and referred to repeatedly. They must function well as books - and not fall apart.

For most publications we offer libraries and advance subscribers the chance to buy the text in a strong full-cloth hardback binding. That may not seem very glamorous, but it fulfils a responsibility towards the research community. We do our best to make our cloth bindings attractive, even though the beautiful glazed buckrams that used to be available are no longer made.

5. Typography

Ostentatious typography - however beautiful in itself - can distract the reader's attention. This is a classic case where the frame begins to dominate the picture. In doing so, it falls under the same censure as ostentatious writing. The college tutor quoted by Dr Johnson said: "Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." The same applies if you are designing a book for people to read. You should avoid forms of ostentation that readers may find intrusive.

I often see typefaces and fine-press typography that I admire - as art. But - to give an example - however much I like Centaur (the face in which Bruce Rogers set Lawrence's Odyssey translation) I would not myself set a book in it. We don't use bold fonts, nor typographic decorations like the 'ct' ligature. In our books we have used Caslon - Lawrence's preferred face - and Garamond. Such choices are not innovative. We like these faces because they are elegant, unostentatious and highly readable. Their track-record as successful book faces goes back for generations.

Lawrence was conscious of these issues. He described the design he aimed for in the subscribers' Seven Pillars as 'vehicular'. His Seven Pillars is not without faults - it was the first book his printer, Manning Pike, produced. But it easily passes the test of readability.

Another typographical distraction I try to avoid is using different faces and font sizes on the same opening. A print designer I used to work with would sometimes say of such mixtures that they "look like a Letraset catalogue". Consistent typography is one of the reasons I prefer endnotes to footnotes. Endnotes in the body of a book - for instance following the text of a letter - can be set in the same font as the main text. At the end of the book they can be set smaller, but on their own pages. Footnotes, however, are usually set in a smaller font to distinguish them from the body text higher up the page. In any case, if a note contains anything significant, why print it in tiny type?

Some typesetting reduces comprehension. David Ogilvy, the advertising guru, pointed out again and again that readers find it easier to grasp the meaning of black text on a white background rather than white text reversed out of black. He had similar objections to 'ragged-right' (left-justified) typesetting, citing reader usability tests showing that ragged-right leads to a large fall in comprehension. For some reason the human eye finds it wearisome to read text set in lines of differing length. The usability results for text that is right-justified (ragged left) were even worse.

I have often wondered why so many modern designers set text left-justified. Is it because doing so reduces the vertical emphasis of fully justified columns? Is it because graphic designers, unlike the professional hot-metal typesetters who preceded them, don't know the rules of hyphenation and can't be bothered to use a hyphenation dictionary? Whatever the reason, if you want readers to comprehend the text in your book, you should print it fully justified.

For the same reason, it's a bad idea to set type in very long lines. I've come across different theories that seek to explain why increasing the line-length reduces comprehension. If there has been definitive research, I haven't seen it.

More generally, I don't like needlessly small type. A few years ago there was a fashion for setting books in small type with a generous space between the lines. It may have looked 'different' - but it was also bad. As eyesight deteriorates with age, many people find small type difficult to read. Why add to their problems? Good design isn't necessarily about doing something new, it's also about doing things well.

6. Format and binding

I have no preconceived ideas about book format, except that it is sometimes determined by the content, and sometimes by the intended use. Some illustrations may look far better if reproduced as large as possible. That may suggest binding a book bound in landscape format rather than portrait format. Books in pocket-format are handy for holiday reading.

When you design a book, you have to choose a format. At present we use three. My comments about our individual books will explain, in each case, the choice we made.

Given the constraints on format and content and typesetting, binding is perhaps the area where we have the widest freedom. Historically, the appearance of a binding has had three purposes. One is to present the book in an attractive way that will make readers wish to look inside. Another, undoubtedly, is to look good on the owner's bookshelf. The third, more modern, is to act as "packaging" - providing a sales hook that will grab attention in a bookshop. In a modern commercial hardback, the last function has passed to the dust-jacket. How many people, I wonder, look at the binding under the jacket before buying a book?

Beyond this, binding is strongly affected by personal taste. I have some likes and dislikes that influence what we do.

On a leather binding, I usually prefer blind-stamped designs to gilt - but from time to time we make exceptions.

Unless a book is truly hand-bound, I prefer not to have raised bands on the spine. They are legitimate, as decoration, but we only use them if we are trying to create a particular impression. On a narrow spine they cramp the titling.

Our ideas about standard bindings have changed. Our early cloth-bound books had dust jackets, because we expected to sell them through bookshops; but this caused problems. If collectors preserve the jacket, they never see the binding. Also, if you put jackets on books in a multi-volume set, you add significantly to the bulk. The jackets on three volumes add twelve times their paper thickness. That has consequences if you issue the set in a slip-case. If someone removes the jackets, the books may appear loose in the case. On the other hand, if someone puts transparent covers on the jackets, the fit could be so tight that the slip-case bursts.

We no longer sell many books through bookshops, so we are phasing-out dust jackets.

Conclusion

Overall, our aim is to produce books that are both functional and handsome. The finest compliment we have yet received came from a rare-book librarian who wrote, on receiving one of our books, "This is something that not only pleases the eye but will be used."

I will end this introduction with two passages from a letter that Lawrence wrote in the summer of 1934, a year before his death, to someone interested in fine-printing. He was, I think, being deliberately controversial:

"I have grave doubts about the decency of hand-printing today: it feels archaistic: hand-writing perhaps, if you feel like that: but if you want to use a machine, why not an ingenious one? Felt balls, for instance, are not as good as rollers."

He went on: "The man who slightly improves the general level of commercial printing seems to me to be better than the artist who sets it an impossibly-precious example. If I ran a press, now, I should work as an aide to some small individual publisher . . . and print only his best-liked new books. This labouring at classics is rather off target, I fancy."

To me, one of the joys of today's fine-press books is the sheer variety of work, created by people with different talents and enthusiasms. Lawrence's library and letters show that he too appreciated a wide range of fine-press work. However, these two passages suggest that his preference was for editions of original work produced with the best machinery avialable.

Jeremy Wilson

T. E. Lawrence, Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw

Trade abridgement

We are working on an abridged two-volume print-on-demand trade paperback (a future trade abridgement was announced when we invited subscriptions to Vol. I of the fine-press edition). The abridged edition will be called T.E. Lawrence, Selected Letters to Bernard and Charlotte Shaw. It will be published by J. and N. Wilson. Both volumes will be published in 2010. There will be less editorial matter, and we are saving some space by re-setting the text. Most of Lawrence's letters will be retained.

Delays during the winter of 2009-10

Our programme during the winter was affected by an accident on 12 November which left Nicole handicapped for several months. This affected 'The Mint' and Later Writings About Service Life and our work on editions planned for 2010. We will do our best to catch up!

Q: Where can I find the price of your books?

3 July

A: Either from the price list or in the online shop. The price list includes approximate equivalents in US$ and Euros. Be warned, however, that these equivalents applied on the stated date. Exchange rates have fluctuated considerably in the past few months and may continue to do so.

Note that these prices are for direct sales from this website. The nominal 'Recommended Retail Price' for books available to the book trade is usually higher.

Trade paperback editions, 2010

We plan to issue these titles during 2010 under our J. and N. Wilson imprint, to mark the 75th anniversary of Lawrence's death.

Jeremy Wilson, T. E. Lawrence, A Short Biography with Letters

New edition with amendments and a selection of passages from Lawrence's letters.

T. E. Lawrence, The Mint

New edition, type reset. New introduction by Jeremy Wilson
This is the 1955 unexpurgated text, reset as a readable paperback
Notre that this edition will not include the later writings about service life to be published in the Castle Hill Press Library Edition (hardback)

T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, The Complete 1922 'Oxford' Text

2 vols. New introduction by Jeremy Wilson
This will use the typesetting of the 2004 trade hardback, including the award-winning index. The edition is an interim measure: in the medium term we will print a one-volume trade paperback, but it will be in a smaller format, with smaller type. This larger-format 2-volume paperback may remain popular with people who prefer larger type.

T. E. Lawrence, Selected Letters to Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1922-1927

T. E. Lawrence, Selected Letters to Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1928-1935

Edited by Jeremy and Nicole Wilson
See note under Trade abridgement above

NEWS

For progress reports on our current projects, please check our News page.

We plan to publish more in 2009 than in any previous year, so there should be updates at least once a fortnight.

Prices

See Pricelist, or visit our online shop

Customer feedback

Some comments from the customer feedback page on our old website:

. . . I couldn't be more pleased. The attention to detail, and conception of this edition, are wonderful . . .

I cannot praise too highly the quality of the production, with exceptional clarity and beauty of print, the erudition of editing, and the excellent on-line service. Important correspondence in beautiful books - the perfect combination.

. . .Excellence in research and editing, and magnificently produced books in superb bindings. Last but not least, efficient and friendly service, with books posted in rock solid packaging.

. . . These books are a pleasure to own and read . . .

. . . a quite invaluable job in publishing (very beautifully . . .) many of the writings of TEL which hitherto have been available only in manuscript form in museums, libraries or private collections, or in out-of-print books which are very hard to obtain.

An excellent set of publications that are beautifully edited and produced. A wonderful addition to my library and to any library.

Castle Hill Press

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

CATALOGUE

Works

Military Report on the Sinai Peninsula

The Mint, 1928 text

The Mint, 1955 text

Translation

The Forest Giant

Letters

T. E. Lawrence Letters series

Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw

Correspondence with Henry Williamson

Correspondence with E. M. Forster and others

Letters from Carchemish

Castle Hill Press News

by Jeremy Wilson

Plans for 2010