COMPILED TO SERVE ‘THE QUESTING CREW’ OF COLLECTORS AND CONSIDERED ‘CORRECT BUT SOMEWHAT INCOM
‘G.’ [i.e. Terence Ian Fytton ARMSTRONG].
Annotations on Some Minor Writings of “T.E. Lawrence” by G.
London: W. Graves for Eric Partridge, Ltd. at the Scholartis Press, 1935.
8vo (186 x 122mm), pp. [2 (blank l.)], [i]-x, 11-28, [2 (blank l.)]; portrait frontispiece after Frederick Carter; original orange cloth, lettered in black on upper board, dustwrapper repeating Carter’s portrait on the upper panel; slight and partial offsetting on free endpapers (as often), lightly marked on lower board and dustwrapper, nonetheless a very good, fresh copy, in much better condition than this work is commonly found.
First edition, no. 484 of 500 copies. Annotations was the second bibliographical work on Lawrence to be published, and was written by the poet, author, bibliographer, and bookseller T.I.F. Armstrong (AKA ‘John Gawsworth’), who possessed ‘a bibliographic talent that led Lawrence Durrell to write that “had he cared to be a bookseller he would now be the greatest one in England”’ (ODNB).
Armstrong’s introduction explains that, ‘[t]he greater part of the bookman notes that follow were compiled early in 1934 to serve as a complement to Mr. T. German-Reed’s Bibliographical Notes on T.E. Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” and “Revolt in the Desert” published in 1928. They were originally compiled for personal reference; and one gusty [M]arch afternoon, shortly after their first drafting, were examined by Shaw during one of our Holborn walks together. He, good-humouredly, judging them “correct but somewhat incomplete”; and declined further comment. […] Provisionally, these annotations may serve “the questing crew” to some purpose’ (p. vii). The frontispiece is a previously-unpublished drawing by Frederick Carter: ‘T.E. Shaw, Cecil Court, March 1934’.
O’Brien E077.
