Pilote de Guerre

Paris: Gallimard, 1942. First edition. Original wrappers, fine, unopened. One of 58 numbered copies on vélin (second paper, after 21 on Mûrier d'Annam). Gallimard had been given approval to print 2,100 copies of Saint Exupéry's account of his reconnaissance flights during the Battle of France in 1940. When it appeared in November 1942 "the scandal broke. The collaborationist press went wild....Vichy did not wait for the press campaign to develop: at the first 'denunciations' by anonymous Frenchmen protesting the antinational character of the work, Gallimard was asked to recall all the copies that had been distributed" Assouline, Gaston Gallimard, p. 270. The recall was particularly effective and very few copies of the Gallimard edition survived. It was replaced by an edition of 500 printed in New York, and then by a series of clandestine mimeographed printings.