THE MINT: A day-book of the R.A.F. Depot between August and December 1922 with later notes by 352087 A/C Ross

London: Jonathan Cape, 1955. First Edition. 4to, publisher’s original blue cloth, gilt lettered on the spine, and in the original printed dustjacket. 206 pp. A handsome copy, internally near fine, the paper fresh. The blue cloth is just lightly rubbed a touch at the tips and slightly age mellowed, the jacket is whole and attractive with some age, a little spotting and some rubbing, the spine toned. FIRST EDITION. Lawrence made his way into the service on two occasions by using adopted names. In August 1927, writing from Karachi, he told Edward Garnett that he had arranged notes in sections and was copying them as a Christmas gift to Garnett.
Lawrence told Garnett that he wrote the book tightly, “because our clothes are so tight, and our lives so tight in the service. There is no freedom of conduct at all.” The typescript, made at Garnett’s order from the actual manuscript, was revised by Lawrence just before his death and it is that text which the present work follows. Lawrence had intended to print a limited edition himself on a hand-press and had already procured enough copies for its frontispiece of a reproduction of a portrait drawing by Augustus John before his untimely death in a motoring accident.
Of this book, which followed Lawrence's great epic, the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, B.H. Liddell Hart wrote: "[A]fter some years, he made a fresh attempt on a large scale, an attempt at supreme realism---in a record of daily life in the Air Force which he christened The Mint. This he himself thought was his best writing---less 'mannered' and pretentious than the Seven Pillars. The present edition is then, the only one available and most closely followed T.E.L’s wishes according to his brother A.W. Lawrence.