Folio Society Releases New Edition of "The Little Prince"

First published in 1943, and since translated into 270 languages and 26 different alphabets, few books have touched the world like Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s modern fable The Little Prince. In its first Folio edition, this definitive two-volume set includes a new introduction by his biographer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff, as well as restored versions of Saint-Exupéry’s unforgettable illustrations, as inseparable from the story as the words themselves. 

Already a best-selling French author and pioneering pilot, Saint-Exupéry wrote his most cherished work while in secluded, self-imposed exile in America after escaping the fall of France to the Germans in 1940. Armed with a set of children’s watercolours and a typewriter, he created a story that was both a wide-eyed celebration of childhood adventure and a sombre, existential work of startling depth. A year after its publication, Saint-Exupéry took off on a mission over the Mediterranean and disappeared, his body never to be found. In Schiff’s poetic words, the author and his prince would forever ‘remain tangled together, twin innocents who fell from the sky’. 

Before his doomed return to Europe, Saint-Exupéry left a working copy of the manuscript, including numerous illustrations not included in the first edition, with his friend Silvia Hamilton, in ‘a rumpled paper bag’. The commentary volume to the Folio edition includes these preliminary sketches and drawings, accompanied by a page-by-page description by Christine Nelson, curator of the recent celebrated exhibition of the collection at New York’s Morgan Library and Museum. 

Using a painstaking production process, Folio have used a 1943 edition to restore each image to its vibrant, original colouring. As a nod to the book’s origins, the illustrations retain their original French captions. The binding on the main volume is a striking yellow with the unmistakable image of the prince staring out at the stars, while the commentary volume is bound in blue in a rippling design by celebrated designer Paul Bonet used on an early French edition of the work. 

Product information 

Bound in blocked cloth. Set in Bembo Infant. 112 pages. 40 integrated colour illustrations. Printed endpapers. 83??4 ?x 61??4 ?. Blocked slipcase.
Commentary Volume: Bound in blocked paper. 80 pages.
36 integrated colour illustrations. 83??4 ?x 61??4 ?. 

UK £49.95 US $73.95 Can $99.95 Aus $99.95