SAINT-EXUPÉRY (Antoine de). Terre des hommes. Paris : Gallimard, [1939]. - In-8, 180 x 115 : 218 pp, (1 f.), printed cover. Red half-maroquin with corners, spine gilt, untrimmed, cover preserved (Laurenchet workshops). Edition printed on May 2, 1939, that is to say 3 months after the original, bearing on the title the mention of "thirty-fifth edition". Precious copy including this very nice mailing addressed to Mrs. Margaret Hughes: To Mrs. Margaret Hughes // Telling her of the great emotion I felt // looking at the signature of the // best friend I ever had // on the neighboring page // And in very friendly homage // Antoine de Saint ExupéryMargaret Hughes (1893-1980) was an American woman of letters, whose cultural and political relations were invaluable to the small French society expatriated to New York from 1940 onwards, and in which Saint-Exupéry had his place alongside André Maurois and Jules Romain . In 1941, Margaret Hughes recounted in a book entitled Les lauriers sont coupés... : Journal d'une volontaire américaine en France (April-September 1940), her involvement as a volunteer aid worker with the Franco-American committee responsible for helping soldiers and civilians, first in the Haute-Vienne and then in the Ardennes. After witnessing the exodus and the bombings, she reached New York by boat, via Lisbon, at the beginning of September 1940, using the same route that Saint-Exupéry took two and a half months later. In his dedication, the author alludes to a small sheet of paper glued to the front of his shipment, on which are Henri Guillaumet's autograph signature and the handwritten words "Oran, April 8, 1940" [sheet in-12, headed Aviz Hotel in Lisbon]. Guillaumet was shot down over the Mediterranean barely eight months after leaving this written trace, and his disappearance caused Saint-Exupéry a sadness that he never managed to completely extinguish. A mythical pilot of l'Aéropostale, Guillaumet had introduced the future author of Night Flight to the difficulties of the Toulouse-Alicante line as early as 1926, before a lasting friendship was born between them. It is precisely in Terre des hommes, a work that the author dedicated to Guillaumet, that the terrible plane crash he suffered in the Andes in 1930 is recounted, at the end of which, after five days of walking, Saint-Exupéry recounts his friend Guillaumet's famous sentence: "What I did, I swear to you, no animal would ever have done it. Spine faded. Browned leaves, small tears to the first two leaves. Provenance : Margaret Hughes, with autograph dispatch from the author. - Ex-libris MD.