Two Proof Sheets Oxford Edition (1 results)

Proof sheet from the Oxford edition, eight copies printed. "Six copies still exist and fragments of one of the other two are extant" (O'Brien). Text in double columns. Two leaves, printed recto only. 1 vols. 4to. Rare proof sheets from Lawrence's private printing of the third text of Seven Pillars by the Oxford Times in 1922, chapter XXII, corresponding to chapter XXI in the 1926 text and chapter XX in the 1935 text, with many changes between the Oxford text and that of the subscribers' edition. In the passage quoted below, the published text opens with "Suddenly Feisal asked me"; and the last sentence reads "the Turks lost their war". This chapter also includes material omitted from the final text of the chapter, such as discussions of the topography of the area around Wadi Yenbo and Nakhl Mubarak, the difficulties of aerial reconnaissance in the desert, and records of the use of a minaret (with Feisal's permission) as an observation point for naval signallers to direct the searchlights and fire from British vessels anchored off Yenbo. Some of these proof sheets were distributed to subscribers to the 1926 edition. Unnumbered Chapter, beginning "On this day Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his while in the camp. I would find it better for my own part, since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab fashion as we must do. Besides, the tribesmen would then understand how to take me. The only wearers of khaki in their experience had been Turkish officers, before whom they took up an attitude of instinctive defence." At the end of the chapter, Lawrence descibes the taking of the port of Yenbo, and how the Turkish forces were guided down to "rush Yenbo in the dark and stamp out Feisal's army once and for all : but that their hearts had failed them at the silence, and the blaze of lighted ships ened to end of the harbour, and the slow beams of the searchlights revealing all the openness of the glacis they would have to cross. So they turned back, and that night, I believe, the Turks lost this war." THE LAWRENCE LEGEND AT THE MOMENT OF ORIGIN. O'Brien A034 Fine Docketed in pencil along one margin Chap XXI complete. Old folds Text in double columns. Two leaves, printed recto only. 1 vols. 4to Proof sheet from the Oxford edition, eight copies printed. ?Six copies still exist and fragments of one of the other two are extant? (O?Brien).