By William Morris, London, 1903

Lawrence once wrote: 'Morris was a great poet: and I'd rather have written The Well at the World's End or The Roots of the Mountains or John Bull or The Hollow Land than anything of the 19th Cent. except War and Peace or Moby Dick . . . I suppose everybody loves one writer, unreasonably. I'd rather Morris than the world.'¹ He acquired this lasting affection during his undergraduate years, and his admiration is clear from the choice of this collected edition, bought to celebrate his First Class Honours in the final examinations at Oxford. For all that, he was not an uncritical admirer. In 1929 he told Charlotte Shaw that 'the charm and comfort of imperfection makes up for most of the failures of the world. We admire the very great, but love the less: perhaps that is why I would choose to live with the works of William Morris, if I had to make a single choice. My reason tells me that he isn't a very great writer: but then , he wrote just the stuff I like.'²

1. T. E. Lawrence to C. F. Shaw, 23.3.1927.
2. T. E. Lawrence to C. F. Shaw, [4.10.]1929.

Printed book, bound in limp vellum, 352 pp., 20.8

Inscribed in pencil: T. E. L. | Finals 1910.