The Odyssey of Homer. Translated by T. E. Shaw (Colonel T. E. Lawrence)

Description

Brown cloth gilt. Page edges toned. Dustwrapper price-clipped, slightly faded on spine, with small chips around top spine, but protected in removable clear plastic sleeve. Endpapers uncracked at gutters. First UK trade edition: Lawrence’s translation was first published in 1932, in a limited edition by Emery Walker. The first trade edition was published in the US the same year (along with a limited edition), with a US ‘popular’ edition published in 1934. This 1935 UK edition was compiled from the sheets of first US trade edition, and released after Lawrence’s death. The translation was undertaken from 1928-32, while Lawrence was serving as a mechanic in the RAF under the assumed name of Shaw; it was completed by Lawrence ‘in the sparse leisure of his service, at Karachi, at Hythe and at Plymouth’, where ‘the life from which he had just emerged ensured an appreciation and understanding of the spirit of the poem which no pure scholar can hope to possess’ (dw). Indeed, Lawrence’s assessment of the author of The Odyssey – ‘driven by his age to legend, where he found men living untrammelled under the God-possessed skies’ – echoes his own deep engagement with medieval chivalry and his self-fashioning as Lawrence of Arabia. In his prose translation, he sought to produce a ‘straightforward’ and vivid rendering – ‘wherever choice offered between a poor and a rich word richness had it’ – of a book he calls ‘neat, close-knit, artful, and various; as nearly word-perfect as midnight oil and pumice can effect’. Robust packaging. Tracking is always added to USA orders. It can be added to other overseas orders on request. Used books are exempt from USA tariffs.