The scholarship of John Worthen, David Ellis, and Mark Kinkead-Weekes, authors of the monumental three-volume Cambridge University Press biography of Lawrence, has been invaluable; so too was the help of the staff at the New York Public Library’s Berg Collection, the Lawrence Manuscripts Collection at Nottingham University, the National Archives in Malta, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos.
I am also grateful to Kate Bland, Lucia Boldrini, Kevin Cannon, Miranda Carter, Claudia Fitzherbert, Roy Foster, Ruth Guilding, Suzanne Hobson, Ken Kwami, Grainne Lamphee, Kate Miller, Constantine Phipps, Ray Ryan, Sarah Harrison Smith, Stacy Schiff, Al Storey, Inigo Thomas, Molly Van Amerongen, Janet Whitaker, Martin Wilson, A. N. Wilson, Clair Wills, Philomena Wills, Gaby Wood, Michael Wood, Andrew Wordsworth, and Ada Wordsworth. Without the generous support of the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Centre for Scholars and Writers, this book would have taken a great deal longer to complete; thank you to Lauren Goldenberg, Paul Delaverdac and Salvatore Scibona, and to my fellow Cullman scholars, Vona Groarke, Corey Robin, Amanda Vaill, Mary Dearborn, francine harris, Marisa Silver, Jennifer Croft, Brooke Holmes, Faith Hillis, Martha Hodes, David Bell, Kirman Uribe, and Karan Mahajan.
I am especially indebted to Paul Keegan, Bernard Richards, and Ophelia Field for their invaluable readings of the book in its first draft, and to James Lever, whose brilliance emboldened the narrative. Thank you also to my agent, Sarah Chalfant, to Michael Fishwick, Alexandra Pringle and Lauren Whybrow at Bloomsbury, and to Ileene Smith, Mitzi Angel, and Jonathan Galassi at FSG. Peter James is a copyeditor without compare.
The two figures who bookended this project each died before it was completed: Evelyn Buchan (1955–2018) passed on the anecdote about Lawrence’s ashes which inspired Burning Man, and the late friendship of James Atlas (1949–2019) kept the fires blazing. Thank you, both.