SHAW, T.E. Translator. The Odyssey of Homer. Translated from the Greek by T.E. Shaw [Lawrence of Arabia] (BRUCE ROGER’S OWN COPY)

New York: Published by Oxford University Press, 1940. First edition thus. 183 x 120mm. Crown octavo. Bound by Colm O Lochlainn at the Sign of the Three Candles in full white goatskin. Three Candles logo on lower pastedown. Covers tooled in gilt with leaf tool at corners; title in gilt on red morocco rectangular label inlaid on upper cover with a circular red morocco label with initials B R separated by a gilt thistle beneath, presumably a previous owner‟s initials. Spine divided into five panels by four raised bands with red morocco onlays decorated in gilt; title in gilt on red morocco label in the second, the remainder with flower tools and the initials B R [Bruce Rogers] separated by a gilt thistle at heel; board edges tooled in gilt; turn-ins tooled in blind; red and gold endbands; red silk marker. Top edge gilt. A rare and fine example of a Colm O Lochlainn binding.

Ó Lochlainn established the Candle Press in 1916. An accomplished bookbinder, he was awarded the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) silver medal for bookbinding in 1925, and the Tailteann medal for bookbinding and decorative art (bronze 1924, silver 1928). He founded his own press, At the Sign of the Three Candles Press, in 1926. He gave the aspiring piper Seamus Ennis his first job at this press, and Ennis collaborated with him on the Irish Street Ballads books.
He succeeded Seamus Ó Casaide as volunteer editor of Irish Book Lover in 1930. He was an assistant in the Faculty of Modern Irish at University College Dublin from 1933 to 1943, where he later became professor of Irish Language and Literature. He was also associated with the founding of An Óige. About 1940 he began the publication in Dublin of an undated series of penny
Irish-language songsheets entitled An Claisceadal‟(“choral singing”). This was originally the name of an informal choral group of Irish-language enthusiasts which had been brought together in Dublin in 1928. He died in a nursing home in Dublin in June 1972 and was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. This edition designed by the great American typographer Bruce Rogers for the Hesperides series in an edition limited to 2,500 copies. This edition uses the roundel chapter headings from the magnificent 1932 Bruce Rogers/Emery Walker edition but here they are in black and white. A handsome little volume in the Lawrence canon