Early copy of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic story features drawing and note of thanks to Dorothy Barclay, a reporter’s assistant who helped him estimate for the number of stars visible from Earth
“I am concerned with matters of consequence,” declares the star-gazing businessman whom Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince meets during his journey. “I am accurate.” But a unique first edition of the novella, which has just gone on sale in London for £150,000, reveals how the author came up with the figure of 501,622,731 for the number of stars the businessman claims as his own.
During the encounter on the fourth planet he visits, the Little Prince finds the businessman busy calculating the number of the “little golden objects that set lazy men to idle dreaming” in the sky. Saint-Exupéry wrote The Little Prince while living on Long Island in the States, so when he wanted to find out how many stars can be seen from Earth, he asked a friend, the New York Times reporter Helen Lazeroff. Her assistant, Dorothy Barclay, phoned the Hayden Planetarium and reported back.
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