Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Timeline

This timeline illuminates the periods of time focused on by the play The Little Pilot

1900-1921 Antoine was born in Lyon, France to an aristocratic family. His father died when Antoine was 4 years old leaving the family impoverished. His younger brother who was his closest confidant died when Antoine was 17 leaving him to be the only man of the family.

During his childhood he would write many poems and stories, waking his family up in the middle of the night to read them his newest creation—for he believed nighttime was when the mind was most true and open.

The first Wright Brother’s airplane flight was in 1903, and Antoine dreamed of being a pilot from an early age. He once attached airplane wings to his bicycle trying to build a flying machine. In 1921, he joined the military as a private solider and earned his pilot’s wings by secretly taking flying lessons.

1926-1929 Antoine became one of the pioneers of international postal flight. He took his duties very seriously, believing he was carrying the weightiest secrets of people’s hearts. This was at a time when aircraft had few instruments and pilots flew with instinct and daring. One of his close friends once crashed on the side of a mountain and after waiting to be rescued for 2 days, got in his plane, rocked back and forth until the plane fell off a cliff, hoping it would take flight. It did.

In 1927, he became the stopover manager at Cape Juby in the Western Sahara where his duties included negotiating the release of pilots who had been captured by hostile groups. During this time he tamed a desert fox to keep him company during his long periods of isolation. He loved to entertain pilots who came to Cape Juby, and he was known for his stories and card tricks. He considered these to be the happiest years of his life.

In 1929, he was transferred to Argentina where he surveyed new mail routes and flew rescue missions for downed pilots.

He wrote many highly acclaimed books about his time as a mail pilot including Night Flight and Wind, Sand, and Stars.

1930-1931 Antoine met and married the spirited and twice-widowed Salvadoran writer and artist Consuelo Suncin. Their relationship was tempestuous and they left each other and reconnected many times, but they remained married and shortly before his death he said his only regret in dying would be to make Consuelo cry. She became the inspiration for the character of the Rose in The Little Prince. Consuelo is often considered Antoine’s muse.

1935 During his attempt to break the speed record for the route between Paris and Saigon, Antoine and his mechanic crashed in the Sahara desert. They only had a day’s worth of water and spent 3 days experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations. On the fourth day their lives were saved by a Bedouin who gave them a native rehydration treatment. This event became the inspiration for the beginning of The Little Prince.

1940-1943 Antoine lived in exile in New York following the German occupation of France. His health was failing. He felt out of place and isolated, especially considering that he never learned to speak English, (when asked why he replied he was not finished learning French.) During this time he wrote his famous children’s story The Little Prince.

1943-1944 Antoine joined the Free French Air Force. He was 43 and considered too old to be flying, but he petitioned endlessly for an exemption until it was granted by General Dwight Eisenhower who claimed Antoine was driving him crazy. He had so many old injuries from former crashes he could not dress himself in his flight suit or turn his head to the left when flying, but he claimed when he flew his grey hair receded back into his skull.

His new plane, Lightning, had so many dials he said he felt more like an accountant than a pilot. Though he was always an audacious pilot, he was rather undisciplined and inattentive when it came to orders and training. He once misread his dials and flew the new plane up 10,000 meters rather than 10,000 feet and blacked out. He also once returned from a reconnaissance mission with pictures of a French Chateau that reminded him of his childhood home rather than pictures of the enemy. He often read and wrote while flying, and circled the airport one day for an hour while he finished reading his novel.

At the end of the book The Little Prince, the Little Prince disappears and you are never sure as a reader if he has died or gone back to his home planet. On July 31, 1944, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry vanished over the Mediterranean.