“I hate bibliophiles”, Lawrence claimed in a letter to Edward Garnett, “and did my best to throw them off the track with the SP, so I did not number my copies, or declare how large the edition was ... or have a standard binding, or signatures, or index, or anything posh”. Lawrence’s epic narrative of his war career in the Middle East took many years to come into print. A first draft dating from 1919 was reputedly lost at Reading Station. Re-written in haste, the new text comprised some 400,000 words, which Lawrence redrafted over the next two years, reducing it to about 70,000 words by 1922. This initial version was printed in only a handful of copies for friends, and in 1923 he decided to publish it in an expensive limited edition. This process took a further two years, Lawrence making changes as the project continued. On completion, the printed sheets were bound by different binders, supposedly to make it impossible to distinguish earlier from later issues. This lavish edition includes illustrations, initials and vignettes that were contributed by Eric Kennington, William Roberts, Augustus John, William Nicholson, Paul Nash, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Gertrude Hermes, and others. In common with other copies of this edition, the “Prickly Pear” plate not included in the list of illustrations is present, and two Paul Nash illustrations called for on pages 92 and 208 are absent (as usual); also not present is the Blair Hughes-Stanton wood engraving on the dedication recorded in a very few copies.