Denis William Michael McDonnell was born on 14 November 1952 -- fourth (older than my twin brother by 15 minutes) -- of five boys and grew up in Nassau County, Long Island (New York). I had several jobs; most notable among them were bank teller, guitar player (bass & acoustic 6-string), Operations Manager and later Director of MIS for a travel wholesale company specializing in trips to the Caribbean. Bonnie and I were married on 16 June 1984. I started selling books by mail part-time in 1987 while still working for that travel company. In 1989 or 1990, I started specializing in T.E. Lawrence. On 20 February 1992, Megan was born and we moved to Honesdale, Pennsylvania; arriving here on Friday the 13th in March of that year. Mary, my mother, moved with us and lives about five minutes down the road. We live in a Victorian house (spelt "money pit") that was originally built for Carl Prosch. Prosch was a glass maker who was imported here by Christian Dorflinger; another glass maker who had a factory nearby. My office is in the old dining room of the house, which still has the original gas lighting fixture in the ceiling, and the commute is very short one.

Our present non-human family members are "Champion" or "Champ" (an English Sheepdog) and "Shadow" (a black Cocker Spaniel). We sprang "Champ" from the Destin Animal Shelter on 11 November 1997 and "Shadow; on 12 October 2001. "Champ" was born sometime in January 1996; nobody's sure of his exact birthday so we picked the 16th. We figure "Shadow" to be about a year old. "Brahms" the Beagle, whose baby photo is on my Personal page (he was eight weeks old at the time) was my first dog and holds a place of honor in our family.

I am often asked the question... "How did you get interested in T.E. Lawrence?" and, since the question is most often asked in a letter or e-mail message, my answer is usually a short one. Since I have all the time in the world to answer it here, I'll give a longer version.

My older brothers took me to see "Lawrence of Arabia" when I was ten years old. Other than thinking it was a "cool" movie, it had no other impact on me at the time. While in England in 1986 or 1987 (being in the travel business I went there often), I bought a copy of The Essential T.E. Lawrence and read the entire book in the hotel room that night. During the rest of that trip, I bought every book I could find by or about T.E. and read them all. When I got home from the trip, it was as though I was on a mission. I wrote letters to anyone I could find who had a connection to T.E. First among them were Jonathan Cape (the publishers), who gave me the address of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust, who gave me the address of A.W. Lawrence and one of the officers of The T.E. Lawrence Society, which I immediately joined and wrote even more letters. I wrote letters to -- and thankfully received replies from -- Malcolm Allen, Malcolm Brown, Harford Montgomery Hyde, Phillip Knightley, John Mack, Paul Marriott, Chris Matheson, Jeffrey Meyers, Suleiman Mousa, Phil O'Brien, Steve Tabachnick, Stan Weintraub, Jeremy Wilson and many more. And several suggested I write someone else, which I did. Many friendships grew out of this letter writing frenzy.

In 1990, Janet Riesman and I started the T.E. Notes newsletter. The first issue was published in July 1990 and was only four pages printed on a crummy IBM Graphics printer and photocopied on the copier at my job. In the beginning T.E. Notes was published and supplied free to my customers. It was, and always has been, intended to be an informal "friendly" newsletter with most of its material coming from our readers. After a year or so, we had to start charging for subscriptions as more and more people were asking for subscriptions who were not book buyers. The TEN, as we call it, readership grew and grew and we added Mary, my mother, as a Contributing Editor to help with writing articles, typing submitted articles and proofreading. At one time, there were more than 250 subscribers worldwide. Janet, for personal reasons, decided that she couldn't devote the time necessary for editing the newsletter and, in 1995, Suellen Miller took on Janet's responsibilities as Co-Editor. The pace of ten (twelve page) issues a year was proving to be too much and were rarely published on time, so we began experimenting with fewer issues. In 1996, we started publishing four (twenty page) issues and, in 1997, we combined four into two issues. We made the decision that, starting with 1998, TEN would be a semi-annual newsletter at forty (or more) pages an issue. Because of our busy schedules, Suellen and I couldn't get the issues out on a timely basis, so I turned the editorship over to Suellen and Edith & Elaine Steblecki who are now carrying on the tradition.

From 1990 until 1995 (or so), I specialized in T.E. Lawrence and strayed very little from the books you'd find in Phil O'Brien's bibliography. When I discovered the Internet, that changed drastically. Today you can find just about anything in my inventory. Bonnie is taking an active role in book buying; primarily for the "Book Nook" in her antique shop at the Hawley Antique Center; the "[hac]" you'll see in my book descriptions. In 1995, I began a book search operation, which has proven successful and now accounts for about 30-40% of my book sales. Recently I added the French Foreign Legion as another specialty and, although I don't think of it as a specialty, books on the Australian Light Horse will always be found in my inventory. I also broker or sell books from inventories of trusted colleagues in Brussels ("[BELGIAN STOCK]") and Scotland ("[UK STOCK]") and am hopeful that I can add an "Australian Stock" sometime soon. Today, I have customers in almost every corner of the world. For a while I even had an Aussie in Antarctica!

Denis McDonnell
July 2002

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