Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born on June 29, 1900 and died onJuly 31, 1944. He was was a French writer and aviator. He is most famous for his novella The Little Prince, and is also well known for his books about aviation adventures, including Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars.
He was killed in action during World War II, fighting with the Free French Forces against Nazi Germany.
Saint Exupéry's first story, "L'Aviateur" ("The Aviator"), was published in the magazine Le Navire d'Argent. In 1929, he published his first book, Courrier Sud (Southern Mail); his career as aviator was also burgeoning, and that same year he flew the Casablanca/Dakar route. Antoine became the director of Cape Juby airfield in Río de Oro, Morocco. In 1929, Saint Exupéry moved to South America, where he was appointed director of the Aeroposta Argentina Company. This period of his life is briefly explored in Wings of Courage, an IMAX film by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud.
Historical marker on the home where Saint Exupéry lived in Quebec. In 1931, Vol de Nuit —the first of his major works and winner of the Prix Femina— was published and made his name. It covers his experiences with the Aeropostale. That same year, at Grasse, Saint Exupéry married Consuelo Suncin, a widowed Salvadoran writer and artist. It would be a stormy union, as Saint Exupéry traveled frequently and indulged in numerous affairs, most notably with the Frenchwoman Helene de Vogüé. De Vogue became Saint Exupery's literary executrix after his death, and also wrote a Saint Exupery biography under the pseudonym Pierre Chevrier.
Saint Exupéry continued to write and fly until the beginning of World War II. During the war, he initially flew with the GR II/33 reconnaissance squadron of the Armée de l'Air. After France's 1940 armistice with Germany, he traveled to the United States. The Saint Exupérys lived in a penthouse apartment at 240 Central Park South in New York City and a rented mansion in Asharoken on Long Island's north shore between January 1941 and April 1943, and also in Quebec City for a time in 1942. He wrote The Little Prince in Asharoken in the summer and fall of 1942; the manuscript was completed by October.