The texts in this edition are those established for Twilight in Italy and Other Essays, ed. Paul Eggert (Cambridge University Press, 1994), Sea and Sardinia, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1997), and Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays, ed. Simonetta de Filippis (Cambridge University Press, 1992). Each of these editions contains an apparatus of all the changes made to the base-texts, a full discussion of the editorial decisions taken, and a detailed account of the complex history of textual transmission, including locations for all surviving manuscript and typescript sources.
An early version of the first essay printed here was written between September 1912 and March 1913, and early versions of the next three essays were written between January and March 1913. These four essays were extensively revised in July and August 1915, and it is probable that the remaining six essays were first written just after this, in September and October 1915 (although they may have been drafted earlier). All the essays were then further revised in January and February 1916 in the proofs for the first edition of Twilight in Italy, which was published in London by Duckworth on 1 June 1916. The corrected proofs for the volume are unlocated, and, for most of the essays, no manuscripts or typescripts survive. The base-text for Twilight in Italy is a surviving set of unrevised Duckworth page proofs at the University of Nottingham, except for the two pages of revised typescript for ‘The Lemon Gardens’ dating from August 1915 (located at Nottinghamshire Archives): these provide the base-text between 125:6 and 126:31. Section half-titles from the Cambridge Edition, except for ‘On the Lago di Garda,’ have been omitted here.
The manuscript of this book, tentatively entitled ‘Diary of a Trip to Sardinia’, was written in Sicily, January–February 1921, and Lawrence revised and corrected the three copies of the typescript during March (each one slightly differently, as was his habit). The revised ribbon-copy typescript (Columbia University) and one revised carbon copy (Yale University) went to the USA, and the latter was the source of the extracts from the book published in the Dial in October and November 1921. The revised ribbon copy was used as setting-copy for Thomas Seltzer’s first edition, published on 12 December 1921 (Lawrence did not see the proofs), and is adopted as the base-text here.
Lawrence wrote chapters I–VI of this collection in Italy between April and June 1927. The manuscript (University of Texas at Austin) was typed in three copies, one of which survives complete and the other two only partially. The manuscript provides the base-text for these essays, emended cautiously from the typescripts: the complete typescript (University of Texas at Austin) has been used to emend the manuscript of ‘Cerveteri’ and ‘Tarquinia’; one partial typescript (University of Tulsa) has been used to emend the manuscript of ‘The Painted Tombs of Tarquinia I’, ‘The Painted Tombs of Tarquinia II’ and ‘Volterra’; and the other partial typescript (University of Texas at Austin) has been used to emend ‘Vulci’. Four of the essays were published in shortened or adapted form in magazines between 1927 and 1928, and all six essays were published together posthumously by Martin Secker as Etruscan Places in September 1932. The manuscript also serves as the base-text for Chapter VII, ‘The Florence Museum’, probably written in October 1927, but left unfinished and not typed. Chapter half-titles from the Cambridge Edition have been omitted here.
Paul Poplawski