Rare typescript of 'The Little Prince' goes on sale for $1.25 million

The Manila Times

Rare typescript of 'The Little Prince' goes on sale for $1.25 million  A rare typescript of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince," containing extensive handmade corrections by the French author and described by book dealers as "literary treasure" will soon go on sale for $1.25 million.  Considered the world's most translated book besides religious texts, the novella about a child who travels from planet to planet gaining wisdom was published at the height of World War II, when Saint-Exupery fought for the Allies in the French air force.  Bound in a worn, black cover, the French-language typescript of "Le Petit Prince" was written in New York during the author's exile from occupied France, London-based Peter Harrington Rare Books said.  It is one of only three known copies in existence, with the other two sitting in the Harry Ransom Center in Texas and France's national library.  REUTERS VIDEO  Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe    Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net    Follow us:  Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook  Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram  Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter  DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion    Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital    Check out our Podcasts:  Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify  Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts  Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic  Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer  Tune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein   #TheManilaTimes #tmtnews  #thelittleprince

Transcript

00:00And that goes to the Harry Ransom Centre which is a big literary archive.

00:06To anyone specific, it appears to be the one he kept with correction and made his own corrections in towards the public.

00:13And then just one looking to me.

00:19My hair's probably doing something weird.

00:24To be honest, it's the moments in between the flipping.

00:29We had the opportunity to acquire this single piece from that collection

00:34because by far the most significant and exciting item in that

00:40and indeed for any collecting around Saint-Exupéry and the Little Prince

00:46this is the most considerable document that has ever been available for sale on the market for him.

00:56So it's here and it's this bit here.

00:59It's not particularly visually appealing but it is.

01:02To get any kind of creative material for the Little Prince is extremely rare.

01:13As I said, signed or inscribed copies are very, very hard to come by

01:17and anything like this is almost impossible

01:20because there's this minute window of time between when it was actually written and when he died.

01:24So it's very special.

01:41But the thing that's extraordinary about this one is that this is the third

01:46and most importantly only remaining that we are aware of available

01:51outside of what we like to in the rare book world call captivity in the wild copy.

02:00And this document represents the closest that any collector or dealer

02:06or people in this part of the trade are ever going to get to the original process of its making.

02:16I suspect that this is a nice historical document.

02:23If you look up famous quotes from the Petit Prince you'll find at the top of all of them

02:28the one where he says one cannot see properly except with the heart

02:33what is essential is invisible to the eye.

02:36And what's amazing about this manuscript or typescript is that he is correcting exactly that thought

02:42and formulating that exact phrasing for the first time in here

02:46particularly the part where he says about he finds the kind of key to the concept

02:51by saying here, on ne vois bien qu'avec le coeur

02:55you cannot see right except with the heart.

02:58Set up portrait style.

03:05Expertise in this field is an aggregation of years and decades of just seeing.

03:12It shows the exact folder in which Exupery had it to protect it and hold the loose pages together

03:20and actually you can see in the way that anyone who's got a schoolboy's notebook or whatever it is

03:25you would cover it in doodles and sketches and also there's even some mathematical notes

03:31probably financial calculations of costs and things he had to do.

03:35But what's particularly nice is that he did these sketches of heads

03:40and this one in particular you can see he's doing a sketch of the little prince

03:46and Exupery would constantly be drawing and redrawing figments and aspects of this character

03:54that really preoccupied his imagination so it's nice to have one inside the cover of the original.

03:59I mean it's not every day that we have something newsworthy of this level.

04:10Certainly when we did find that we were able to acquire this and make it available to our collectors

04:15that was a real high point for me professionally.

04:21I've been doing this for 13 years now and in terms of the quest that we as dealers and collectors

04:27and curators of libraries are all on the point is to get to the heart of the creative process

04:34to get to documents that speak to the heart of the creative process.

04:52I'm going to do some sort of flicking I guess.

04:57This is quite simply the most exceptional example of that that I've ever seen or had the opportunity to be involved with

05:05so yes it's a high point and I feel almost a little poignant about it

05:11because I don't quite see how I'm ever going to beat this.

05:17That would be nice.

05:20So...

05:24Translated.

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