Beschreibung:

LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward. Autograph letter signed ('T.E. Shaw') to an unidentified recipient ('Dear Sirs'), apparently a bookseller, n.p., 12 March 1926, 1½ pages, 8vo , annotations by recipient (some soiling to vertical crease, slight yellowing, traces of mount). SUBSCRIBERS FOR SEVEN PILLARS . Lawrence agrees with his correspondent's suggestion to write to one Major Meakin, but refuses to write to the Victoria Library: 'All subscribers must be private people. Not even the British Museum is to be allowed either a subscription or a free copy'; he thus invites an alternative suggestion. The letter goes on to correct a misapprehension about the commercial basis of the issue: '"Sotherans", as such, haven't anything to do with the issue. No copies are sold through booksellers, & there are no commissions or anything given to anybody. I hope this does not disappoint you', concluding on a frosty note 'You are only suggesting two subscribers to me because [J.G.] Wilson [of the booksellers Bumpus] asked me to do something of the sort'. Lawrence had written to Wilson, the manager of Bumpus's bookshop in London, asking if he 'on his own account, and not as Bumpus, would like to place twenty copies at the thirty guineas price. I explained that it was not book-selling, and I was offering him no commission or reward' (quoted in: J. Wilson Lawrence of Arabia , London: 1989, p. 738). Wilson had obviously asked Lawrence to allow a bookselling colleague to place two further copies.