Evolution of a Revolt

At the end of World War I, T.E. Lawrence was known throughout the world as Lawrence of Arabia, the prime mover of a surprisingly unified Arab desert campaign against the Turks, the “Emir Dynamite” of one of modern warfare’s most effective guerrilla operations.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence’s literary monument of these events, is one of the few twentieth century works of epic style and tone. Although he produced several preliminary versions, these were preceded from 1918 through 1921 by a series of now-it-can-be-told writings in newspapers and journals, half of them published anonymously. Brought together here for the first time, they in effect form a “first published version” of Seven Pillars of Wisdom in which Lawrence wrote far less self-consciously and did not strive so blatantly for literary effect. Instead, his style came naturally and he salted his narrative liberally with wry, aphoristic language and effective metaphor.