Principles of description

When the whole of the Guide is on-line, the core structure will consist of a series of alphabetical list-pages within which the works described are listed under their author's name. Detailed descriptions of each work will be accessed from these alphabetical lists. Very extensive cross-references will link contributions by a different author, such as introductions, directly to the detailed descriptions. The same will apply to contributions to such works as T. E. Lawrence by his friends and specialist periodicals such as the Journal of the T. E. Lawrence Society.

While many users will wish to browse the full cross-referenced lists, others who are seeking the description of a specific work will prefer the quick-reference author/title lists. A linked key to these appears at the head of every page in the Guide.   

Biographical notes

In the full alphabetical lists, biographical notes will be added, giving background information about people who knew or corresponded with Lawrence. The information will include:

• Dates of birth and death, if known to me.
• Inclusion in the British Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) or Who's Who (WW).
• Profession at the time of knowing Lawrence.
• Dates and circumstances of friendship or acquaintance with Lawrence.
• Publication of correspondence in the T. E. Lawrence letters collections edited by David Garnett (DG) and Malcolm Brown (MB) and also Letters to T. E. Lawrence (LTEL).
• Contributions to T. E. Lawrence by his Friends (Friends) in both the full 1937 edition and the abridged 1954 edition.
• Details of published reminiscences of Lawrence (for principles of description see below).
• Details of biographical studies containing significant material about their relationship with Lawrence (for principles of description see below).

Manuscript materials

• The location, if known to me, of manuscripts of works by Lawrence is listed before the entry for the first printed edition.

Printed materials

Scope

The Guide aims to provide an entry for all printed materials within what might be termed a 'T. E. Lawrence Special Collection' category, as defined below. Many additional biographical references are indicated in head-notes and in the appendix of select reading lists.

Where works qualify for detailed listing, all identified English and American editions are included, as well as editions known to me in other languages.

Printed materials that are listed in detail:

• Books and translations by Lawrence, and their British and American serialisations.
• Contributions by Lawrence published during his lifetime in newspapers and periodicals.
• Collected editions of Lawrence's minor writings.
• Collected editions of Lawrence's letters.
• Forewords, introductions, prefaces, prefatory letters and other contributions by Lawrence to works by other authors.
• Biographical and bibliographical monographs of any length, provided that at least one third of the text relates to Lawrence.
• Journals about Lawrence and volumes of collected essays about him containing contributions by several authors.
• Plays, film-scripts, television and radio scripts relating to Lawrence, and related ephemera such as theatre programmes.
• Fiction in which Lawrence plays a central role under his own name.
• Editions of verse in which more than one third relates to Lawrence.
• Publications and ephemera connected with memorials to Lawrence.
• Publishers' ephemera connected with any of the above.

I hope in the future to add a list of unpublished university theses relating to Lawrence, and will be grateful for information about these.

The following categories of printed material are excluded:

• Extracts (other than serials) from works by Lawrence published posthumously in newspapers, if the work is published in book form elsewhere.
• Anthologies in which writings by Lawrence, published elsewhere, amount to less than one third of the whole text.
• Fiction in which characters may have been inspired by Lawrence.

Principles of Description

Publications listed in head-notes only:

Head-notes will include brief publication details (Author, title, UK and US publishers, place of publication, date) for the following:

• Reminiscences of Lawrence by people who knew him, published in their autobiographies or in articles in periodicals that are widely available.
• Biographies of people who knew Lawrence which contain significant references to him.
• Seriously researched articles on Lawrence by his biographers or other notable writers.

The following categories of material are only exceptionally included in head-notes:

• Newspaper articles.
• Book, theatre and film reviews (in the long run, I hope that many book reviews can be added).
• Passing references in books such as histories of the Middle East that do not contain significant original information about Lawrence.

Information contained in the detailed descriptions

Main entries: books

Title. The title is normally given in full as it appears on the title page. Only the first word and proper names are capitalised.

Other contributions. If mentioned on the title page or title verso, the names of other contributors to a work are quoted as given, immediately after the title.

If other contributions are present but are not mentioned on the title leaf, they are listed in the indented section of the entry.

In either case, page references are given for textual contributions which (at present with the exception of translators' notes) are cross-referenced in the listing under their author.

Place and publisher. The place of publication is quoted as it appears on the title leaf. The publisher's name is quoted in the form used on the title page.

Publisher's date and imprint. In many cases reprints and even revised editions of a text carry the imprint and/or date of the original edition. I quote whatever statement contained in book might be used by a library cataloguer as a basis for an entry. The first line of the indented section of the entry gives what I believe to be the true edition status and the correct date, if that is known to me.

Series titles. Series titles are quoted in the form given, within brackets, including the volume number if present.

SNBs and ISBNs. These are listed where present.

Format. The spine height is given in millimetres.

Pagination. Despite the convergence in accepted cataloguing rules, existing library catalogues use differing rules to describe pagination, and this can cause compilers of union catalogues such as NUC to include spurious variants of identical books.

In the great majority of cases, I myself have examined the books described, and their pagination is listed to a consistent rule. This uses the bibliographer's principle of accounting for every page of a book's printed sheets. That gives the longest possible pagination of a book, while the breakdown of pagination sequences will usually enable readers to correlate my description with that of an edition described under different rules.

Publisher's advertisements. In recent editions, publisher's advertisements at the rear of a book are generally an integral part of the text sheets. If this is the case, or there is reasonable doubt, the additional pages are included in the pagination sequence, but a note on the presence of advertisements, with page references, is given in the second part of the entry.

If publisher's advertisements are definitely bound-in as a separately printed section they are listed separately within square brackets after the pagination sequence.

Illustrations. Frontispieces, plates and maps not printed on text sheets are noted. Illustrations printed on text sheets are noted as 'illus.', with an explanatory note. Maps and facsimiles in the text are noted separately.

Chronologies and bibliographies. These are noted with page references.

Index or glossary. This is noted.

Binding. The colour, material, lettering colour and decoration are described. Coloured or illustrated lining papers, headbands, tailbands, place ribbons, and gilt or coloured edges are noted.

The binding-colour references given are from the ISCC-NBS color-name charts illustrated with centroid colours. I have used the symbols > and < to mean respectively 'lighter than' and 'darker than' the colour-chart sample. Where possible all colour matching was done in natural daylight and checked by two people. Nevertheless, we did not always reach the same conclusion as Phil O'Brien. This is probably because of variation in binding colours between copies, particularly for books that are many years old. However, I have found that colour-matching book bindings to a fairly limited chart of specimens is an inexact science!

Wrappers and dust jackets. Wrappers, and also dust jackets I have seen, are briefly described. However, I plan to add scanned colour images to the on-line Guide, normally showing the front and spine. These will be accessed via a thumbnail image on the description page. Samples here.  

Additional information

Additional information that might not appear in a library catalogue is given in the indented section of each entry. This may include:

• My opinion about the true edition and printing ranking.
• The original title of translated works.
• Earlier versions of the text, or previous publication under another title.
• Subsequent revised or collected publication, or publication under a different title.
• Collateral information about the printing history or about points distinguishing different printings.
• The Bodleian shelfmark or, failing that, the location of a copy examined.
• The reference number in Phil O'Brien's Bibliography.
• [To be added progressively:] A brief note on the scope and quality of the text.

Main entries: Ephemera

Ephemera are described in a simplified form, sufficient to identify the item in question.

Main entries: periodicals

Articles in periodicals are listed under the title of the periodical, and cross-referenced under their author. The place of publication, volume, issue number, date and page references are given. Subsequent reprints of an article are listed.

Cross-references

The list is very extensively cross-referenced, in a form which is fuller than usual (for example, page references are included). Cross-references are given for the following:

• Authors with honorific titles (cross-referenced under the family name).
• Author's real names (cross-referenced under their pseudonyms) .
• Anonymous works (entered under the title and cross-referenced under the author's name, if known).
• Articles, introductions and other contributions relevant to Lawrence (cross-referenced under the author's name).
• Edited works listed under their main author (cross-referenced under the editor's name).