T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 512

LM 11/3/42 336171 A C B Shaw Rose B E R S 149, P. O'pra Briqa Road Karachi India 27.V.37 Dear Isham Your letter of April 19 came to me ... quickly; I wonder who forwarded it! Since December last I have been back in India, where I'm due to serve for five years, say till the winter of 1939. After that nothing is open. This last feeds me up. I hate the sights and smells of it, and resent the further exile from London, which is the most habitable spot of the globe, right enough. It must be a bad shock after St. James'! I hadn't heard you were married. Please commend me to Mrs Isham, if your judgement approves the idea. I'd like to meet you again; but the physical difficulties seem distinct. The R.A.F. holds me till 1939, and after that I'll. have to find a job in England somewhere. You ask about my book. I produced a few copies of the complete thing for people I know, at £50 a copy; and recently published 40% of it in a pamphlet called "Revolt in the Desert", to pay for the deficit on the private edition, which did not go off very well. I'd have been glad of your subscription ... year ago. I wonder what address Storrs gave you. I was then at Cranwell in Lincolnshire. In the end I gave away the odd sixty copies of the private edition, for which subscrible a deficit. Since the little That was the cause of the deficit. Since the little book came out the value of the private one has risen to nearly £500. I was sure it would; but it is a year or two too late to help me. However the little thing has sold well, they say, and will pay off my debt. You are right in suspecting there is beyond that point! profit, beyond that point! Your only way to get a copy of the private edition now is to buy a second-hand copy. Bumpus, the bookseller in Oxford Street, would probably find you one for £500! 365