In its online Books and Manuscripts sale From Grolier to Godard ending today Sotheby’s is presenting 15 original drawings by Antoine Saint-Exupéry created in Algiers between late 1943 and early 1944, most of them previously unseen.
They depict The Little Prince in various poses, with a scarf blowing in the wind, climbing a mountain, lying on his planet, pulling a snail on a lead, or standing on his asteroid surrounded by stars, just as he appears on the cover of the book published in New York only a few months earlier.
The drawings were made in Algiers during a lunch at the home of writer, journalist and broadcaster Jean Amrouche and his wife Suzanne. In 1943, the Amrouches settled in Algiers at the invitation of André Gide whom they had hosted in Tunis the previous year. At that time, Algiers was a vibrant intellectual and cultural hub, attracting exiled writers and thinkers. It was most likely through Gide that Jean and Suzanne Amrouche met Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in autumn 1943.
According to their son Pierre, his mother used to recall that Saint-Ex, as everyone called him, was a charming, humorous man who liked to drink and easily captivated those around him. He amused himself by doodling little figures on the paper tablecloth and on cigarette packets. Two are accompanied by speech bubbles, one reading: “Does it show that I’m drunk?” (estimated: €10,000 – €15,000) Suzanne Amrouche then handed him her notebook, and it was in this notebook that he drew these Little Prince sketches and gifted them to his hosts.
Among the 15 drawings, Antoine Saint-Exupéry sketched the Little Prince beside a snail (estimate: €30,000 – €50,000), a creature that never made it into the beloved cast of characters we know today. Intriguingly, two additional sketches of the Little Prince with a gastropod are held at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, hinting that the author may once have toyed with the idea of a snail companion before settling on the iconic fox.
Besides the snail, it is said that Saint-Exupéry also once envisioned a butterfly hunter as part of the Little Prince’s universe, a character which never found a place in the final pages. A sketch preserved at the Pierpont Morgan Library reveals this fleeting idea. In the Sotheby's drawing, the Little Prince gazes at a delicate butterfly and his beloved rose, with a solitary star shining overhead (estimate: €20,000 – €30,000).
