LAWRENCE (T.E.)
Autograph cheque signed ('J.H. Ross'), made out to Manning Pike for £100.
Lawrence pays £100 to the printer of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The Seven Pillars was issued 1st December 1926, and its colophon states “texts and decorations printed by Manning Pike with the assistance of H.J. Hodgson at 25 Charles Street”. Famously, the appearance of the printed word was so important for Lawrence that the text itself was adjusted so that no words were divided at the ed of the line and each paragraph finished in the second half of the line. Lawrence described the procedure in a letter to Charlotte Shaw: “I want you to realise, even before you see his work, that Pike is an artist of great severity and carefulness, and that his pages are made as beautifully as he can encompass them. To him the balances of lines and paragraphs and passages are vital: they are the elements of which the physical book is made up. I have no share in this aspect of the book: my work has been only to write the hand-draft of it. The translation from manuscript to metal is his work, and is as difficult as mine. My paragraphs and prose have to be arranged as well, in metal as they will go. He is fortunate in having found a living author: for it makes his work much easier, often, to leave out a few words, or a few lines, to make a new paragraph begin here or there, to telescope two chapters: - and I’ve given him carte blanche to cut and change the text as he pleases (only refusing to let him add anything): this is fair, for words are elastic ideas, and type-metal isn’t elastic at all. He has the harder job” (31 August 1924, Brown pp.271-2)
