T. E. Lawrence - The Mint - The RAF Memoir of “A/c Ross” in Dust Jacket

T. E. Lawrence - The Mint - 1955 Jonathan Cape Edition in Dust Jacket

LAWRENCE, T. E. The Mint. A Day-book of the R.A.F. Depot between August and December 1922 with Later Notes. London: Jonathan Cape, 1955.

First edition, first impression of the first British trade edition, published posthumously by Jonathan Cape in 1955, with the introductory note by A. W. Lawrence.

Quarto. Original blue-grey cloth, spine lettered in gilt with RAF roundel device, upper board blocked in blind, top edge blue, original printed dust jacket priced at 17s. 6d. net. Title printed in red and black.

A very good copy in the original dust jacket. Cloth clean and square, binding firm, contents bright with light spotting to the endpapers and preliminary leaves. Dust jacket toned and marked, with rubbing, small chips and wear to the spine ends, corners and folds, but substantially complete and retaining its striking original design.

Contemporary gift inscription to the front free endpaper: “Evelyn Warren from Edmund. 8.3.1955.” This appears to be a private gift inscription dated shortly after publication. 

A highly desirable copy of one of T. E. Lawrence’s most important and unusual works.

The Mint records Lawrence’s experience in the ranks of the Royal Air Force after the fame of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Seeking anonymity, Lawrence enlisted under the name John Hume Ross, and the book was published under his service identity, 352087 A/c Ross, as shown prominently on both the title-page and dust jacket.

Where Seven Pillars of Wisdom turned the Arab Revolt into epic literature, The Mint is a harder, colder and more intimate book. It is Lawrence stripped of legend: no longer the celebrated desert commander, but an ordinary recruit subjected to drill, fatigue, barrack-room language, discipline, humiliation, comradeship and the machinery of service life. Written from within the lower ranks, it gives a rare literary view of the early RAF from the perspective of an airman rather than an officer.

The book is also an important work in the literature of identity. Lawrence had become one of the most famous men in Britain, yet here he deliberately effaces himself beneath a number, a false name and a uniform. The result is part memoir, part documentary account, part psychological study, and part prose experiment. Its bluntness, compression and unsentimental realism make it one of the most distinctive military books of the twentieth century.

A significant Lawrence title, here in the original dust jacket, with a contemporary dated inscription from the year of publication.