The Essential T E Lawrence

First thus, first printing.  328pp, monochrome portrait plate frontispiece.  Crimson cloth-covered boards with gilt titles on spine.  Top edge sprayed red. 8vo.  Cloth a little discoloured around edges and joints, gently rounded on spine tips and corners.  Hint of spotting on fore and lower text block edges.  Internally neat, clean, bright and tight.  In its original paper dust wrapper, darkened and marked, sunned over spine rubbed around edges, some small mild stains on verso, shelf worn.

More than a selection of the writings of T E Lawrence (1888-1935), perhaps better known as Lawrence of Arabia, this is an attempt to present his life as a whole in his own words, and the extracts have been chosen the development of the gifted schoolboy into the genius of warfare and then the recluse who sought respite from the legend he had created.  David Garnett contributes a preface which places  T E Lawrence in the context of those who knew him best.