The Little Prince

The census claim is confirmed in substance: both the original French text and the English translation first appeared from Reynal & Hitchcock in New York in April 1943, not from a French house — the famous reversal is real. Sources conflict on sequencing within April 1943: several date the English issue to 6 April 1943 with the French following a few days later, while dealers describing the 260-copy French limitation call that the true first. Both New York issues are collected and the days-level precedence is not settled here. Gallimard's Paris edition is the first French edition published in France: printing was completed 30 November 1945 but it was not released until April 1946, and Gallimard dates it 1946. It is a hardcover of 93 pp. in blue cloth with the Little Prince and the "nrf" device stamped in red, under a jacket closely resembling the American one. It is set from the American French text and carries its own errors — the asteroid is numbered "3251" in Paris against "325" in New York, and a star is missing from the astronomer's telescope scene.