Lawrence of Arabia, strange man of letters

T.E. Lawrence - Lawrence of Arabia (1888-1935) - had an unusual range of talents and interests. This book presents one, his literary interests and criticism, relatively neglected by his many biographers. It contains a complete collection of Lawrence's published criticism, extensive extracts from his sparkling literary correspondence, and a carefully documented account of his literary views and activities. Lawrence's published criticism includes all of his introductions, book reviews, and motley pieces. They have not previously been collected; only two are in print. Lawrence's literary correspondence includes comments on various literary themes and on thirty-eight writers, mainly Lawrence's contemporaries such as Conrad, Cummings, Doughty, Forster, David Garnett, Graves, Hardy, D.H. Lawrence, and G.B. Shaw. Lawrence's opinions are frank, independent, trenchant, irreverent, entertaining, and idiosyncratic. A few examples may suggest their flavor: - Homer ... was an antiquarian, a tame-cat, a book-worm: not a great poet, but a most charming novelist. A Thornton Wilder of his time. - Every paragraph [Conrad] writes ... goes on sounding in waves, like the note of a tenor bell, after he stops ... He's as much a giant of the subjective as Kipling is of the objective. Do they hate one another? - [On Ulysses] I'm ploughing section by section, through its repulsive dullness. The technical skill of that first chapter is as dazzling as anything I've ever met: & the later ones fall right away. - ... Pound who (misled perhaps by his name into thinking himself a born economist) seems to have run off on a new hobby-horse of financial theory ... Always angry, is Ezra P. The chronological arrangement of Lawrence's comments on each author shows the marked differences in the views he expressed to the author and to others, and the gradual changes in his standards as he himself changed from an adulator of creative artists to an admirer of common men. Over half of this correspondence has not been published; much of the rest is now out of print. The editor's introductions and notes discuss and document Lawrence's remarkable reading and memory; his wide acquaintance with leading writers, artists, and publishers; his exceptional kindness and generosity; his enthusiasm upon starting new literary projects and later sense of failure and worthlessness; his contradictions, megalomania, nihilism, and self-hatred. This examination of Lawrence's literary views affords new insight into his puzzling character; the letters and extensive documentation illuminate the British literary scene between the two World Wars.