A Century of Roundels. SWINBURNE (Algernon Charles).

T. E. LAWRENCE'S COPY

Second Edition. 8vo. [206 x 152 x 16 mm]. xi, [i], 100 pp. Bound in contemporary half vellum, green cloth sides, smooth spine lettered upwards in gilt between two black lines, marbled endleaves, plain edges. (Loss of gilt to three words on the spine, light spotting to endleaves). Contained in a new cloth drop-over box, with a blue morocco label on the front reproducing the booklabel in gilt, lettered in gilt down the spine).
London: Chatto & Windus, 1883

A very good copy, belonging to T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935), with his posthumous booklabel "From the Library of T. E. Lawrence Clouds Hill". It appears he inherited it from his younger brother William George Lawrence who was killed in France in 1915 at the age of 26. There is a pencil note in T.E.L's hand at the head of the front fly-leaf "Ex libris W.G.L."

T. E. Lawrence was a committed book collector and reader. In August 1910 he wrote to his mother: "Why cannot one make one's books live except in the night, after hours of straining? And you know they have to be your own books too, and you have to read them more than once. I think they take on something of your personality, and your environment also - you know a second hand book sometimes is so much more flesh and blood than a new one - and it is almost terrible to think that your ideas, yourself in your books, may be giving life to generations of readers after you are forgotten".

The contents of the library at Clouds Hill, an isolated cottage in Dorset where Lawrence lived during the final years of his life, was diligently recorded after his death and published in 1937 in T. E. Lawrence By His Friends, pp.476-510. This volume is recorded on p.506 ("A Century of Roundels [2nd ed.] London, Chatto & Windus, 1883, 8 in. Half-parchment. "Ex libris W.G.L.""). It was one of six works by Swinburne in the library, the others being Selections (1919), Atalanta in Calydon (1894) acquired by T.E.L. in 1920, Poems and Ballads, 2nd series (1878), Poems and Ballads, 3rd series (1902), and Songs before Sunrise (1909) acquired by T.E.L. in 1919. Most of the books were sold by J. G. Wilson, proprietor of London booksellers J. & E. Bumpus Ltd, when the book labels were added. A few were retained by his brother, A.W. Lawrence, and were sold in the 1980s, without the label.

Stock no. ebc7702