215 - Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, 1945 special edition with alternating black-and-white pages (A21). White cover. Very good condition.

Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, 1945 special edition with alternating black-and-white pages (A21). White cover. Very good condition. There weren’t many covers available in 1944, especially for *The Secret of the Unicorn*, which was Hergé’s biggest hit. So the number of copies bound was determined by the number of covers remaining in stock, and when there weren’t enough covers, a white cover was used. This is the case with this A21 edition of *The Secret of the Unicorn* from Casterman. It’s probably the only one left in this condition.. The fact that this copy lacks a cover is therefore evidence of: 1/ Its rarity (very few covers were available for this title during that period) 2/ Its date of publication (in the years that followed, after the war, it would have been easy to bind the issues with a *Licorne* cover—given the exponential increase in print runs after the war). Therefore, it was only during the war that an album could have been bound without a cover illustration. 3/ As a result, all other A21 copies are authenticated in the same way: bound after the A22s, but not long afterward (before 1946). Until now, this album was known only through Hergé’s correspondence regarding an A22 copy; this is the very first A21 copy to appear on the market. It is reasonable to conclude that the copy we are offering is the only A21 copy to have survived to the present day. This is a unique opportunity to acquire a historic piece from Hergé’s body of work. Gilles Fraysse