Pilote de guerre [Flight to Arras]
New York, Editions de la Maison française, 1942.
1 vol. (175 x 220 mm) of 253 p. and 1 f. Red morocco, spine ribbed, framed endpapers, red moiré silk endpapers, gilt fillet on edges, gilt edges on endpapers, wrappers and spine preserved, bordered case (binding signed by Semet and Plumelle).
First edition in French.
One of 50 copies on Text paper (No. 49) – deluxe edition after a single copy on handmade vellum and 25 copies on Strathmore, all out of print.
We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.
“I will fight anyone who tries to enslave the freedom of man to one individual – or to a mass of individuals.” Before following up this fight, in which he would lose his life, demobilized after the ‘Phoney War’, Saint-Exupéry took refuge in the United States, and it was in New York that he wrote these lines. This edition, published in February 1942, is also the first complete edition, as it includes (p. 34) the seven words of a sentence in which the author collectively refers to his orderly, a bigwig of the general staff, and Hitler “who started this insane war” as “imbeciles” and whose censorship in France will require its removal in the Gallimard edition of December 1942. But this only suspended the book for a short time, since at the beginning of 1943, the German authorities, alerted by two scandalized articles in Je suis partout, banned the work. This censorship led to the two clandestine versions published by Gaston Riby at the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1944.
The text appeared in pre-original form, in English, in January 1942 in the magazine Atlantic Monthly, then in volume the following month: the work would be at the top of the best sellers list for six months: “this book is a great and beautiful book, perhaps the true book of the war of 1939” wrote Pierre Mac Orlan in the newspaper Les Nouveaux Temps, on January 8, 1943.
A very beautiful copy in red morocco from Semet et Plumelle.
A choice copy from the impeccable library of Marcel de Merre (Paris, Sotheby’s, 2007, no. 426), with bookplate.
