T.E. Lawrence Studies

In recent years I have seen several allegedly signed copies of Lawrence’s Revolt in the Desert offered on eBay.

These are almost certainly forgeries, done by different people at different times. Some of the forgeries are very crude, but others are fairly passable.

Lawrence stated that he would never sign a copy of Revolt in the Desert. To my knowledge he did so only once, when he wrote a passage from Seven Pillars in the front of a copy of Revolt for his friend Charlotte Shaw (the wife of Bernard Shaw). That copy is now in the British Library. It is sometimes alleged that he also inscribed a copy for the South Waziristan Scouts, but the claim stemmed from a misleading photograph, which showed the note he sent with the book laid on to one of its front flyleaves.

If someone offers you a signed copy of Revolt in the Desert, it’s most unlikely to be genuine - however good it looks. To be credible, a signed Revolt would need a cast-iron end-to-end provenance.

Jeremy Wilson

On 12 June (Sale 2011 Lot 204) Christies NY is offering a copy of the 1926 subscribers’ edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom from the Spiro collection. The copy is bound in full contemporary vellum.

The pre-sale estimate is US$ 40,000-60,000

Postscript, 1 July.

The price fetched including buyer’s premium was $43,750