54. OEUVRES

During the evenings of the 1911 season at Carchemish Lawrence had time to read. A letter in March mentions that he might shortly ask for an edition of Rabelais to be sent out to him, and at the end of the month he wrote: 'It would be appreciated if Will asked Blackwell's to write to Jean Gillequin, publisher Bould. St. Michel Paris, ordering the 3 volumes of the Rabelais in his 1 f. 25 collection (La Renaissance du Livre)’.¹ The books arrived in May, and Lawrence wrote again: 'The Rabelais has come: a beautiful little edition and a great joy: very many thanks for the quickness of it.'² In June he reported that he was reading Rabelais every night, 'a most profound comfort'.³

Many years later he wrote: 'My notion of the world's big books are War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazoff, Moby Dick, Rabelais, Don Quixote . . . There's a fine set of cores of darkness!'⁴

At this period Lawrence was interested in all aspects of book production because he was planning to set up his own private press. The amateur binding on this set was probably executed by him, perhaps as a bookbinding exercise, during the months he spent in England in the autumn of 1911. There is a later reference in his letters to binding up French novels in buckram. While the outside of the binding is very presentable, the green endpapers fail to conceal that the cloth has been carelessly trimmed where it is turned over onto the inner side of the covers.

1. T. E. Lawrence to his family, 31.3.1911, HL pp. 146-7.

2. T. E. Lawrence to his family, 29.5.1911, HL p. 164.

3. T. E. Lawrence to his family, 19.6.1911, HL p. 172.

4. T. E. Lawrence to E. Garnett, 1.12.1927, DG p. 548.

Printed book, cloth bound, three volumes, I: 252 pp., II: 247 pp., III: 211 pp ., each 18.3

Each volume inscribed on flyleaf: 'T. E. Lawrence Carchemish 1911'

Provenance: Acquired from T. E. Lawrence’s family.