SAINT-EXUPÉRY, Antoine de (1900-44). The Little Prince, London, 1944, large 8vo, half title, coloured illustrations by the author, original pink pictorial cloth, dust-jacket. THE FIRST EDITION TO BE PRINTED IN THE U.K. RARE. With 4 other books. (5)

SAINT-EXUPÉRY, Antoine de (1900-44).  The Little Prince ... Translated from the French by Katherine Woods. London: William Heinemann, 1944. Large 8vo (220 x 150mm). Half title, coloured illustrations by the author, 91-pages (vertical section to the left of the half title spotted, some very faint mainly marginal spotting and staining, more pronounced to the final leaf). Original salmon-pink pictorial cloth (a patch of very light spotting to the lettering on the upper cover), dust-jacket with the price of 9s. 6d. unclipped (endpapers spotted, minor erosion to the head and foot of the backstrip, a few short tears, a few small stains to the upper wrapper, turn-ins lightly spotted, lightly browned). Provenance: [The Little Prince] "... wishes you all a happy Xmas and happy days always. Louise. Dec. 1945" (inscription on the half title incorporating its printed title). THE FIRST EDITION TO BE PRINTED IN THE U.K., and preceding the first edition to be published in France. "The Little Prince" has a complicated printing history, exacerbated by its wartime publication. It was first published in 1943 in French and English language editions by Reynal & Hithcock in New York, since the author's works at that time were banned in France by the Vichy regime. The first edition to be published in France was not until April 1946 (posthumously, following the author's mysterious disappearance as a pilot with the French Air Force during a reconnaissance mission in July 1944), although it was originally intended to have been published in time for Christmas of the previous year, the first after the end of the war. "There are a few stories which in some way, in some degree, change the world forever for their readers. This is one" (from the front turn-in). Boxall (ed.) 1001 Books (2006) p.422: "Saint-Exupéry's tale is a surreal one, defying the conventions of reality and entering into the realm of dreamscape, where the imagination can run riot. The narrator is gently led into a discovery of his capacity for imagining. And so the role reversal begins, and the child tutors the adult in the sacred art of wondering. Written during the final year of his life, Saint-Exupry's The Little Prince reads as a manifesto on how the adult life can and should be lived"; Grolier Children 88. RARE. With 4 other books including two later editions of the same work; and two others, namely, Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories For Little Children ... With Illustrations by the Author and Coloured Plates by Joseph M. Gleeson (London, 1913, 4to, coloured plates and illustrations, fine original blue decorated cloth gilt, the first edition with coloured illustrations) and T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (London, 1953, seventh impression, coloured illustrations by Nicolas Bentley, original coloured pictorial cloth, dust-jacket). (5)