"I DREW THESE TIDES OF MEN INTO MY HANDS AND WROTE MY WILL ACROSS THE SKY IN STARS": LAWRENCE'S SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM

LAWRENCE, T.E. Seven Pillars of Wisdom. A Triumph. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran, 1935. Quarto, original half tan pigskin, top edge stained red, uncut. $2500.

Limited first American edition, number 740 of 750 copies, of Lawrence's famous account of his legendary part in the Arab rebellion against the Ottoman Empire during World War I, richly illustrated.

Even though "Seven Pillars is remarkably accurate as a military history," its blending of epic heroic adventure, psychological insight, and spiritual transformation make it the literary treasure that Lawrence intended it to be, deserving Winston Churchill's praise as one of "the greatest books ever written in the English language" (Wilson 55). "We were a self-centered army," Lawrence writes, "without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom… [with] a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that our earlier ambitions faded in its glare." Illustrated with tissue-guarded photographic plates and portraits from sketches, facsimile pages from Lawrence texts and manuscripts, in-text line drawings, and folding maps. Preceded only by the very rare private printing of 1926 and the limited English edition of 1935. Without very scarce original dust jacket and slipcase. Publisher's advertisement laid in. Duval 14. O'Brien A053.

A fine copy, unusual in this condition.