At an Artcurial’s modern books and manuscripts sale in Paris, a French collector won a recently discovered two page draft of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince". It took eight bidders, six telephone bidders and a ten minute bidding war for this manuscript, and at the end of it all, it sold for a whopping €385,600 ($494,000) including buyer's premium — almost ten times its low estimate. But let’s remember that the draft consists of almost two illegible handwritten pages, so the bidding price is a very clear sign that the power of this iconic text holds immense influence over collectors’ imaginations.

The document was found by Artcurial experts Olivier Devers and Benoît Puttemans inbetween a pack of letters and manuscripts given to a collector. It contains a different version of chapters seventeen and nineteen, which have now been translated into 267 languages. Devers estimated that  it was written was in 1941, while Saint-Exupéry, an active pilot in the Resistance was in exile in New York. In this version of the story, after visiting six planets, the little prince arrives on an alternate-reality earth. A particular line within the story reads as a tribute to the melting pot of New York city: "If you brought together all the inhabitants of this planet close together as if for a meeting, the Whites, the Yellows, the Blacks, the children, the elderly, the women, and the men, without forgetting a single one, all of humanity would fit on Long Island."

The ultimate manuscript of "The Little Prince" was donated to the Morgan Library by Sylvia Hamilton Reinhardt, a New York journalist. Saint-Exupéry was in love with her and gave her this manuscript in 1943, shortly before his assignment to North Africa, whereby he never returned. In 1944, while flying reconnaissance for the Resistance off the southern coast of France, his plane crashed. In 1948 Saint-Exupéry was officially recognized as having died for France as a war veteran.

It has been said that 30 lots of different manuscripts by Saint-Exupéry fetched €1.4 million ($1.8 million), more than doubling their combined €600,000 estimate. The lot contained six chapters of "Pilote de Guerre" ("War Pilot"), totaling 124 pages was purchased by a different French collector for €311,200 ($400,000), surpassing its estimate of €250,000. Furthermore a South American collector managed to purchase "Escales en Patagonie"("Stopping in Patagonia"), a 24-page autographed manuscript from 1932, for €162,500 ($208,000), or more than triple its €50,000 low estimate.

I have read and reread this little treasure in French and in English. Le Petite Prince is a favourite in my book collection and the story stays with you always.

Via: artinfo.com

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