A rare typescript of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, containing extensive handwritten corrections by the French author and described by book dealers as “literary treasure”, will soon go on sale for US$1.25 million.
Bound in a worn, black cover, the French-language typescript of Le Petit Prince was produced in New York during the author’s exile from Nazi-occupied France, just before he left to serve in the Free French Air Force fighting the occupation.
The other two of the three known copies in existence sit in France’s national library and the Harry Ransom Centre in the US state of Texas.
The typescript features what is thought to be the first written appearance of one of the book’s most famous lines: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; the essential is invisible to the eye.”