T. E. Lawrence to Edward Garnett

5.12.30.

Dear E.G.

What a good book it is! I ungratefully delayed writing while I read in it. How nearly big, as poet, Blunt was. Only his vanity saved him from doing really good things in three or four roles. I think these Gregynog people are printing beautifully. I understand the money is the Davies family, and that Tom Jones is in it, somehow. Hodgson, the pressman of course was mine. Who runs the press? And who chooses their books? They have taste. I would like them to do Crane's Jenny (out of print and hard to get) and Vansittart's Singing Caravan which Heinemann printed poorly: and there is room in England for a really fine translation of Niels Lyhne by Jacobsen. You put me on to two of these. Did I ever put you on to the Vansittart? It is that rarest English thing, light poetry.

I do Odyssey all spare days and half the nights: with luck it will be finished before the end of March. What a relief. I am tired of all Homer's namby-pamby men and women.

It is very good of you. I have just had the new Scenes and Portraits by Manning, which is inscribed to me. Really, I am coming on. If only I did not so intensely admire these people who seem to like me. What one needs is the love of one's enemies!

Yours

T.E.S.