?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 50,000 - $ 75,000
WARWICK JAMES'S COPY LAWRENCE, T.E. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, A Triumph. Printed in red and black. Color frontispiece portrait of Feisal by Augustus John and 65 plates (many colored or tinted, 4 double-page) by Eric Kennington, William Roberts, Augustus John, William Nicholson, Paul Nash and others, 4 folding color maps, 58 illustrations in text (one color) by Roberts, Nash, Kennington, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Gertrude Hermes and others, initials by Edward Wadsworth, illustrated endpapers by Kennington. 4to, original green panelled morocco gilt by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, covers with double gilt and single blind rule borders, front cover gilt-lettered, gilt panelled spine in six compartments with raised bands, all edges gilt, few barely perceptible surface marks; with the four-page 'Some Notes on the Writing of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Shaw' laid in loose; housed in custom cloth drop-back box; retaining the original cardboard mailing box (laid flat in folding portfolio case) addressed in ink to "Warwick James / 2 Park Crescent / W1", and with printed number label ("161"). [London: Printed for the author by Manning Pike and H.J. Hodgson, 1926]
privately printed edition, one of 170 complete copies, inscribed by lawrence "complete copy. i.xii.26 tes." lawrence's dentist warwick james's copy. With 'Roberts' amended in holograph to 'K[ennington]'. James's copy reflects the usual variations known to be due to the author's complicated requirements of printing and assembling: it has page XV mis-paginated as VIII, and Kennington's colored landscape tail-piece ('False Quiet') is present at end of page XVIII. The 'Prickly Pear' plate is included, but not the two Paul Nash line drawings called for on pages 92 ('The prophet's tomb') and 208 ('A garden'), or the Blair Hughes-Stanton wood-engraving that in some copies illustrated the dedicatory poem. In addition to the 170 copies initialed by Lawrence as "Complete," Lawrence had 32 incomplete copies (lacking certain illustrations) bound up and issued to the men who had served with him during the campaign but who could not afford to pay the price of the subscriber's edition. One of the legendary books of the century, elaborately produced (in addition to Sangorski & Sutcliffe, Lawrence also employed a further six binders) and illustrated with works commissioned by him. A fine example with an impeccable provenance. O'Brien A040
