There is we believe an unrecorded bibliographical mystery surrounding the American Gift edition of Revolt in the Desert. This is the true second American edition, being designated the “Gift” edition published by George H. Doran in 1927. This being the scarcest and preferred issue with the Eric Kennington decorated endpapers which had been designed for the 1926 ‘Subscribers’ issue of Seven Pillars of Wisdom and with some eighteen line illustrations from this edition, none used elsewhere at this date. This ‘Gift’ edition is the most interesting and possibly elusive of the many editions of Revolt and is a handsome, tall volume with all of the additional illustrations, better in appearance than the standard trade Doran edition of the same date. It apparently only went to one edition for the Christmas market of 1927.
As far as we are aware there is no mention of this variant edition in the standard Bibliography by Phil O’Brien or in any other bibliography or article.
Upon recently examining two copies, a strange anomaly came to light. The expected copies have eighteen line drawings taken from the 1926 Subscribers edition. However, we have recently come across a copy that lacks the line drawing on page 127, whilst retaining the lines of text that are upon this page, together with the seventeen other line drawings in the volume. This line drawing is showing a cartoon-like character of Lawrence in front of a blackboard confronted by army offices, drawn by Kennington and entitled “Kindergarten” in the 1926 edition of Seven Pillars.
The curious feature is that the copy that lacks the page 127 drawing has a gathering of these pages, including 127 that is a little shorter than the standard gatherings of the rest of the volume and the paper feels slightly coarser. In the copies with the illustration the gatherings are all of the same length. The fact that the printing of the volume uses the same typesetting is indicated by the slight filling in of the character 2 in 1927 on the reverse of the title stating “First Printing…”, this occurs on both volumes, also the reverse of the title page contains identical information.
This raises a number of questions, did the printing plate become damaged at sometime in the printing process and the gathering had to be replaced in the remaining print run, or was the image removed following a complaint about it, if so why? Finally how many copies are extant with the anomaly of the missing line drawing? Has anyone noticed this?
If anyone might have further information or any thoughts on this puzzle please do get in touch.
We would like to thank David Whiting for drawing the lack of an image on page 127 to our attention after purchasing and subsequently returning the volume.
