An unrepentant lifelong doodler and sketcher, Saint-Exupéry had for many years sketched little people on his napkins, tablecloths, letters to paramours and friends, lined notebooks and other scraps of paper. Early figures took on a multitude of appearances, engaged in a variety of tasks. Some appeared as doll-like figures, baby puffins, angels with wings, and even a figure similar to that in Robert Crumb’s Keep On Truckin’ of 1968. In a 1940 letter to a friend, he sketched a character with his own thinning hair, sporting a bow tie, viewed as a boyish alter-ego, and he later gave a similar doodle to Elizabeth Reynal at his New York publisher’s office. Most often the diminutive figure was expressed as “…a slip of a boy with a turned up nose, lots of hair, long baggy pants that were too short for him and with a long scarf that whipped in the wind. Usually the boy had a puzzled expression…
This boy Saint-Exupéry came to think of as “the little prince”, and he was usually found standing on top of a tiny planet. Most of the time he was alone, sometimes walking up a path. Sometimes there was a single flower on the planet.” His characters were frequently seen chasing butterflies; when asked why they did so, Saint-Exupéry, who thought of the figures as his alter-egos, replied that they were actually pursuing a “realistic ideal”. Saint-Exupéry eventually settled on the image of the young, precocious child with curly blond hair, an image which would become the subject of speculations as to its source. One “most striking” illustration depicted the pilot-narrator asleep beside his stranded plane prior to the prince’s arrival. Although images of the narrator were created for the story, none survived Saint-Exupéry’s editing process.
To mark both the 50th and 70th anniversaries of The Little Prince’s publication, the Morgan Library and Museum mounted major exhibitions of Saint-Exupéry’s draft manuscript, preparatory drawings, and similar materials that it had obtained earlier from a variety of sources. One major source was an intimate friend of his in New York City, Silvia Hamilton (later, Reinhardt), to whom the author gave his working manuscript just prior to returning to Algiers to resume his work as a Free French Air Force pilot. Hamilton’s black poodle, Mocha, is believed to have been the model for the Little Prince’s sheep, with a Raggedy Ann type doll helping as a stand-in for the prince. Additionally, a pet boxer, Hannibal, that Hamilton gave to him as a gift may have been the model for the story’s desert fox and its tiger. A museum representative stated that the novella’s final drawings were lost.
Seven unpublished drawings for the book were also displayed at the museum’s exhibit, including fearsome looking baobab trees ready to destroy the prince’s home asteroid, as well as a picture of the story’s narrator, the forlorn pilot, sleeping next to his aircraft. That image was likely omitted to avoid giving the story a ‘literalness’ that would distract its readers, according to one of the Morgan Library’s staff. According to Christine Nelson, curator of literary and historical manuscripts at the Morgan, “the image evokes Saint-Exupéry’s own experience of awakening in an isolated, mysterious place. You can almost imagine him wandering without much food and water and conjuring up the character of the Little Prince.” Another reviewer noted that the author “chose the best illustrations… to maintain the ethereal tone he wanted his story to exude. Choosing between ambiguity and literal text and illustrations, Saint-Exupéry chose in every case to obfuscate.” Not a single drawing of the story’s narrator–pilot survived the author’s editing process; “he was very good at excising what was not essential to his story”.
In 2001 Japanese researcher Yoshitsugu Kunugiyama surmised that the cover illustration Saint-Exupéry painted for Le Petit Prince deliberately depicted a stellar arrangement created to celebrate the author’s own centennial of birth. According to Kunugiyama, the cover art chosen from one of Saint-Exupéry’s watercolour illustrations contained the planets Saturn and Jupiter, plus the star Aldebaran, arranged as an isosceles triangle, a celestial configuration which occurred in the early 1940s, and which he likely knew would next reoccur in the year 2000. Saint-Exupéry possessed superior mathematical skills and was a master celestial navigator, a vocation he had studied at Salon-de-Provence with the Armée de l’Air (French Air Force).
Post-publication
Stacy Schiff, one of Saint-Exupéry’s principal biographers, wrote of him and his most famous work, “rarely have an author and a character been so intimately bound together as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his Little Prince”, and remarking of their dual fates, “the two remain tangled together, twin innocents who fell from the sky”. Another noted that the novella’s mystique was “enhanced by the parallel between author and subject: imperious innocents whose lives consist of equal parts flight and failed love, who fall to earth, are little impressed with what they find here and ultimately disappear without a trace.”
Only weeks after his novella was first published in April 1943, despite his wife’s pleadings and before Saint-Exupéry had received any of its royalties (he never would), the author-aviator joined the Free French Forces. He would remain immensely proud of The Little Prince, and almost always kept a personal copy with him which he often read to others during the war.
Further information: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Disappearance
As part of a 32-ship military convoy he voyaged to North Africa where he rejoined his old squadron to fight with the Allies, resuming his work as a reconnaissance pilot despite the best efforts of his friends, colleagues and fellow airmen who could not prevent him from flying. He had previously escaped death by the barest of margins a number of times, but was then lost in action during a July 1944 spy mission from the moonscapes of Corsica to the continent in preparation for the Allied invasion of occupied France, only three weeks before the Liberation of Paris.
Reception
Many of the book’s initial reviewers were flummoxed by the fable’s multi-layered story line and its morals, perhaps expecting a significantly more conventional story from one of France’s leading writers. Its publisher had anticipated such reactions to a work that fell neither exclusively into a children’s nor adults’ literature classification. The New York Times reviewer wrote shortly before its publication “What makes a good children’s book? … The Little Prince, which is a fascinating fable for grown-ups is of conjectural value for boys and girls of 6, 8 and 10. It may very well be a book on the order of Gulliver’s Travels, something that exists on two levels”; “Can you clutter up a narrative with paradox and irony and still hold the interest of 8 and 10-year olds?” Notwithstanding the story’s duality, the review added that major portions of the story would probably still “capture the imagination of any child.” Addressing whether it was written for children or adults, Reynal & Hitchcock promoted it ambiguously, saying that as far as they were concerned “it’s the new book by Saint-Exupéry”, adding to its dustcover “There are few stories which in some way, in some degree, change the world forever for their readers. This is one.”
Others were not shy in offering their praise. Austin Stevens, also of The New York Times, stated that the story possessed “…large portions of the Saint-Exupéry philosophy and poetic spirit. In a way it’s a sort of credo.” P. L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins series of children books, wrote in a New York Herald Tribune review: “The Little Prince will shine upon children with a sidewise gleam. It will strike them in some place that is not the mind and glow there until the time comes for them to comprehend it.”
British journalist Neil Clark, in The American Conservative in 2009, offered an expansive view of Saint-Exupéry’s overall work by commenting that it provides a “…bird’s eye view of humanity and contains some of the most profound observations on the human condition ever written”, and that the author’s novella “doesn’t merely express his contempt for selfishness and materialism but shows how life should be lived.”
The book enjoyed modest initial success, residing on The New York Times Best Seller list for only two weeks, as opposed to his earlier 1939 English translation, Wind, Sand and Stars which remained on the same list for nearly five months. As a cultural icon, the novella regularly draws new readers and reviewers, selling almost two million copies annually and also spawning numerous adaptations. Modern-day references to The Little Prince include one from The New York Times that describes it as “abstract” and “fabulistic”.
Literary translations and printed editions
In April 2017, The Little Prince became the world’s most translated non-religious book, with translations into 300 languages. This number had risen to 600 by November 2024.
Katherine Woods (1886–1968) produced the first English translation of 1943, which was later joined by several other English translations. Her translation contained some errors. Mistranslations aside, one reviewer noted that Woods’s almost “poetic” English translation has long been admired by many Little Prince lovers, who have spanned generations (it stayed in print until 2001), as her work maintains Saint-Exupéry’s story-telling spirit and charm, if not
