Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1927

T. E. Lawrence left England in December 1926, expecting to remain overseas for five years.

Throughout 1927 he was stationed at the RAF Depot, Karachi, in what was then India.

The challenge he faced was not just separation from home.

The Arabian chapter in his life, which had absorbed so much of his energy since 1910, had closed at the end of the previous year when he completed the subscribers' edition of 'Seven Pillars'.

In January 1927 he had to make a new beginning. That is the starting-point for this second volume of correspondence with the Shaws.

In the event, Lawrence was to spend only two years away from England.

But what happened during those years was deeply significant.

By the time he returned, in January 1929, there had been a marked recovery in his balance and self-esteem.

His mother saw him a few weeks later - they had last met in 1922 - and afterwards wrote: 'It is such a blessing that he is so well - almost like the Ned of the pre-war years.' There is something about his weekly letters to Charlotte Shaw - many previously unpublished - that is at least as important as the wealth of autobiographical detail they contain. They were addressed to a single person, whose attitude he found sympathetic.

Other letters may cover, to some extent, similar ground; but they were sent to a scatter of recipients with whom Lawrence had different relationships.

The letters to Charlotte provide a far more coherent insight into his thinking. The Shaw letters - Lawrence's largest known post-war correspondence - fill four of nine volumes of his correspondence with writers in this series.

Each volume has an index by Hazel K. Bell. The Letters series is part of the scholarly fine-press edition of Lawrence's writings published for subscribers by Castle Hill Press.

The four Shaw volumes were issued separately to subscribers between 2000 and 2009.

They are no longer sold separately, but are available as a 4-volume set, either in the quarter-cloth series binding by The Fine Book Bindery (ISBN 9781873141052), or a full-cloth library binding (ISBN 9781873141526).

These sets are issued without dust-jackets.