Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the autobiographical account of the experiences of British Army Colonel T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") while serving as a military advisor to Bedouin forces during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire of 1916 to 1918.
It was completed in February 1922 but first published in December 1926. It was originally published for the US market in 1927 as Revolt in the Desert and is the only version that was commercially released while he was alive. Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1935) is a longer form of the book at almost double the page count and released to the international market.
thumb|upright=1.3|Revolt in the Desert was the only version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom published for the general public in Lawrence’s lifetime.
Title
The title comes from the Book of Proverbs: "Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars" () (King James Version). Before the First World War, Lawrence had begun work on a scholarly book about seven great cities of the Middle East, to be called Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It was incomplete when war broke out and Lawrence stated that he destroyed the manuscript. He used his original title for the later work.
The book had to be rewritten three times, once following the loss of the manuscript on a train at Reading railway station. From Seven Pillars, "... and then lost all but the Introduction and drafts of Books 9 and 10 at Reading Station, while changing trains. This was about Christmas, 1919." (p. 21)
thumb|right|upright=1.3|"The Seven Pillars" rock formation in <br/>[[Wadi Rum, Jordan]]
Seven Pillars of Wisdom is an autobiographical account of his experiences during the Arab Revolt of 1916–1918, when Lawrence was based in Wadi Rum in Jordan as a member of the British Forces. With the support of Emir Faisal and his tribesmen, he helped organise and carry out attacks on the Ottoman forces from Aqaba in the south to Damascus in the north. Many sites inside the Wadi Rum area have been named after Lawrence to attract tourists, although there is little or no evidence connecting him to any of these places, including the rock formations near the entrance now known as "The Seven Pillars".
Manuscripts and editions
Lawrence kept extensive notes throughout the course of his involvement in the Revolt. He began work on a clean narrative in the first half of 1919 while in Paris for the Peace Conference and, later that summer, while back in Egypt. By December 1919, he had a fair draft of most of the ten books that make up the Seven Pillars of Wisdom but lost it (except for the introduction and final two books) when he misplaced his briefcase while changing trains at Reading railway station.