Seven Pillars of Wisdom
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom ( original English title Seven Pillars of Wisdom ) is a 1926 autobiographical war report published by the British Thomas Edward Lawrence, known as " Lawrence of Arabia". In the work he describes the he organized the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire in the years 1917 / 1918.
Title
The title comes from the Old Testament and refers to a saying of Solomon (Prov. 9.1 EU): " Wisdom has built her house, hewn out her seven pillars. " Lawrence had taken this title from an earlier planned book project, the seven should act ancient cities in the Middle East.
Versions
A first version of the text completed Lawrence 1919. The only copy of the manuscript, the author has, however, lost in a train. From the memory to 1920 Lawrence wrote a second version of the work and revised it to 1922. This version in the amount of 335,000 words later, he appropriated the Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford ( " Oxford " version ).
After 1922, Lawrence took further corrections to his work and was persuaded by friends to make a shortened version. The nerves at this time already severely challenged author developed in this work an increasing distance to the events described and its text. The result was a version in the amount of 250,000 words, which was sold in 1926 elaborately bound and lavishly illustrated with considerable financial loss for Lawrence to about 200 subscribers. To make up for the losses, Lawrence 1927 brought a further abridged version under the title Revolt in the Desert (English: Uprising in the desert) for the general public out.
After the death of Lawrence in 1935, the text of the subscriber version was released to the public, although connoisseurs of " Oxford " version it urged that in their opinion, more significant text to publish. However, the great international success of today 's most widely abbreviated version disabled this project. Only after the expiration of the British copyright, the " Oxford " version was released in 1997. George Bernard Shaw and Edward Morgan Forster they saw as the true masterpiece of TE Lawrence.