Castle Hill Press

T. E. Lawrence, Towards 'An English Fourth'

Fragments and echoes of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 1918-21

Fine-press edition printed for subscribers

227 numbered copies, edited by Jeremy and Nicole Wilson, Introduction by Jeremy Wilson

For ISBNs and prices see Specification

"Do you remember my telling you once that I collected a shelf of ‘Titanic’ books . . . and that they were The Karamazovs, Zarathustra, and Moby Dick. Well, my ambition was to make an English fourth."

During the period 1919-22 T.E. Lawrence's intellectual and creative powers were at their zenith. At the Peace Conference, in Whitehall and at All Souls he mixed with some of the most brilliant men and women of his time. His personal outlook was informed by two cultures. His opinions drew on an extraordinary range of experience, and on first-hand knowledge of the peoples of the Middle East.

His writings during this period show a breadth of analysis unparalleled in anything he wrote before or afterwards. In Seven Pillars of Wisdom and in essays like 'The Changing East' and 'Evolution of a Revolt' you can see the calibre of mind that impressed contemporaries such as Winston Churchill, Arnold Toynbee and Lionel Curtis. These qualities are surely one of the reasons why Seven Pillars of Wisdom has had such enduring appeal.

Apart from private correspondence, Lawrence's writings during these first post-war years fall into two categories.

• Political and diplomatic writing relating to the future of the Middle East. (We plan to publish this category in a separate volume.)
• Writings about the history of the Arab Revolt, which culminated in the 1922 text of Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Towards 'An English Fourth' corresponds to the second category. We have gathered surviving drafts and other writings that reflect the first two manuscripts of Seven Pillars - neither of which survive.

• Specification