T. E. Lawrence Correspondence – Page 523

Dear Mr Bonner Your letter relieved me. I'd had a feeling that I'd had paid too much altogether for those proofs; and now I'll believe with delight that he's been able to unload them you, without loss, which is splendid; for you have bought them without knowing me, and in the fair market, and I'm not guilty. In producing the Seven Pillars I was trying to learn a little about printing; and that accounts for the very long delay in getting it proof. Your first chapter was set up in 1923; and the book not finished till 1927. Nearly four years; but I had only our half-holidays and spare evenings in camp, for my private work. Palmer was my half-section in the Tank Corps, the other storeman in the Quartermaster's stores. He saw me working on the proofs, for years, and begged a set from those sent me for correction. I do not know if their margins are not terribly dirty. Some sheets were. E.M.F. is E.M. Forster, a very fine modern novelist. You probably know him. He is a friend of Palmer's; & Palmer and helped Palmer sell his (your) copy when he was hard up. Lots of people have found my book useful that way; I hope, if there's a copy for me, to profit by their example in 1939 when I get back to England. I left before the binders had done their work; and so haven't seen any completed copy; and I can't make out (there have been several deaths & muddles intervening) how the supply and the demand. I fancy that there should be ten spare copies. One of these is claimed, is so; and the last would be mine. Let's hope the book's value does not slump aloft away, meanwhile. It's bound to go a down a bit, for the booksellers have run it up on the idea that there are only 100 copies (which is not at all true), and that it's obscene, which still seems to me untrue. I don't think it's much good,as a work. Like the performing dog, it's wonderful that an English Colonel should write at all: rather than that he writes well. But people get excited, & praised what they had not seen. Yours sincerely T E Shaw