Courrier Sud [Southern Mail]
Paris, Gallimard, (30 avril) 1929.
1 vol. (165 x 215 mm) of 227 p. and [2] f. Lemon half morocco with corners, ribbed spine, gilt fillets on covers, gilt title, date at bottom, gilt head, preserved covers and spine, bordered case (binding signed by P.-L. Martin).
First edition.
One of 109 copies printed on vergé paper, this one personalized for P. Deflandre (no. LXXXV).
We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.
It was in 1925 that Saint-Exupéry met the cream of the Gallimard publishing house at the Parisian fair of his cousin Yvonne de Lestrange: Gaston Gallimard, André Gide and Jean Schlumberger. These encounters were to play a fundamental role in Saint-Exupéry’s entry into literature.
Before attempting the Aéropostale adventure in South America, Saint-Exupéry was sent to the air navigation school in Brest for an advanced course. It was to this address that he sent the first proofs of his book, passages of which he read to his cousin Honoré Estiennes d’Orves, his future official reader. He made only minor corrections and the final proof was signed in early April 1929. It is a much expanded version of the short story “The Aviator,” published in the magazine Le Navire d’argent in 1926.
Published thanks to André Gide, who wrote the preface two years later to Vol de nuit, Courrier Sud was prefaced by André Beucler, who first supported the idea that “Saint-Exupéry is not a writer”, an idea taken up and developed by André Malraux: Saint-Exupéry is not a writer in the conventional sense and “he does not want to write anything that he cannot guarantee to be true or that he has not had the opportunity to verify at his own expense. This is why the strictly literary universe remains suspect to him insofar as it deceives the reader by transporting him to an easy and fallacious world. Saint-Exupéry remains one of those men compelled to accuracy, for whom imagination can indeed be added to reality, but cannot take its place (…)”.
A very fine copy: it comes from the library of Marcel de Merre (ex-libris et vente, Paris, Sotheby’s, 2007, no. 436).
