THE MAN WHO DIED

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931. First American edition, same year as the British. 8vo, publisher’s original black cloth lettered in gilt on the spine, the upper cover embossed with the phoenix. 103pp. A nice copy, lightly mellowed. This work was originally titled THE ESCAPED COCK and was published in Paris by the Black Sun Press in 1929, Lawrence decided upon this title shortly before his death. The text of the two is substantially similar but some technical differences of note. As THE ESCAPED COCK was limited to 450 copies and the British edition was limited to 2000, this edition can honestly be called the first general trade edition of the work.
The story is Lawrence’s retelling of the events after Jesus (never referred to by name) awakens in his tomb. It was meant to be Lawrence's ultimate critique of Christianity. It is often held that the reason he never refers to the central character as anything but "the man who had died" was because he feared the story being banned as heresy, but it could also be that he simply wanted to emphasize to the reader how profound of a psychological effect those days in the tomb would have, how much returning from death would change a person.