He corresponded with many notable figures, including George Bernard Shaw, Edward Elgar, Winston Churchill, Robert Graves, Noël Coward, E. M. Forster, Siegfried Sassoon, John Buchan, Augustus John, and Henry Williamson. He met Joseph Conrad and commented perceptively on his works. The many letters that he sent to Shaw's wife Charlotte are revealing as to his character. Lawrence was a competent speaker of French and Arabic, and reader of Latin and Ancient Greek. Lawrence published three major texts in his lifetime. The most significant was his account of the Arab Revolt in "Seven Pillars of Wisdom". Homer's "Odyssey" and "The Forest Giant" were translations, the latter an otherwise forgotten work of French fiction. He received a flat fee for the second translation, and negotiated a generous fee plus royalties for the first. Lawrence's major work is "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", an account of his war experiences. In 1919, he was elected to a seven-year research fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford, providing him with support while he worked on the book. Certain parts of the book also serve as essays on military strategy, Arabian culture and geography, and other topics. He rewrote "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" three times, once "blind" after he lost the manuscript while changing trains at Reading railway station. There are many alleged "embellishments" in "Seven Pillars", though some allegations have been disproved with time, most definitively in Jeremy Wilson's . However, Lawrence's own notebooks refute his claim to have crossed the Sinai Peninsula from Aqaba to the Suez Canal in just 49 hours without any sleep. In reality, this famous camel ride lasted for more than 70 hours and was interrupted by two long breaks for sleeping, which Lawrence omitted when he wrote his book. In the preface, Lawrence acknowledged George Bernard Shaw's help in editing the book. The first edition was published in 1926 as a high-priced private subscription edition, printed in London by Herbert John Hodgson and Roy Manning Pike, with illustrations by Eric Kennington, Augustus John, Paul Nash, Blair Hughes-Stanton, and Hughes-Stanton's wife Gertrude Hermes. Lawrence was afraid that the public would think that he would make a substantial income from the book, and he stated that it was written as a result of his war service. He vowed not to take any money from it, and indeed he did not, as the sale price was one third of the production costs, leaving him in substantial debt.