The French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – born on 29 June 1900 and died on 31 July 1944 – wrote only one children’s book, but that book – we are obviously talking about The little Prince – it is one of the most popular in the world (translated into over 250 languages and dialects).
Saint-Exupéry scrisse The little Prince in French, while he was in New York, where he had arrived in 1940, fleeing the Nazi invasion of France. In 1943 (shortly after the original publication of the book), before leaving as a pilot in the war, the writer left his friend Silvia Hamilton with an envelope containing the original manuscript of the book and some drawings.
In 1968, the Morgan Library of New York purchased that material, which in addition to the texts of the novel contained many notes, but above all the original illustrations of Saint-Exupéry made in watercolor, which went to accompany the story. In 2017 some of these designs were auctioned for over two hundred thousand euros each.
Here are the watercolors de The little Prince, collected from the blog Brain Pickings when in 2014 the Morgan Library curated an exhibition dedicated precisely to Saint-Exupéry.
The little Prince tells the story of an airplane pilot who crashes in the desert, where he meets a child who claims to be a prince who came from a distant asteroid. The little boy also tells of having arrived on Earth to look for a sheep, which he would need to eliminate the shrubs from his asteroid and save it. He has visited many planets, where he has met various individuals, but he misses the rose that is on his asteroid. However, he ends up bitten by a snake, and when the next day the aviator cannot find his body, he can only hope that he has simply managed to return to his kingdom.
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