574. Le Petit Prince = The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince), first published in 1943, is a novella, the most famous work of French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The Little Prince is a poetic tale, with watercolour illustrations by the author, in which a pilot stranded in the desert meets a young prince visiting Earth from a tiny asteroid.