Collectors can start lusting, because, with Hergé’s approval, there actually was a wooden model kit of The Unicorn sold in the 1940s. The rest of us must do with the cartoon he developed, working from two period French ships, Le Brilliant and Le Soleil Royale. That should be satisfactory, because for years Hergé considered this his best book, even above the conclusion of the adventure, Red Rackham’s Treasure. It’s not surprising that Spielberg picked it as the starting place for his movies.
When the Nazis invaded Hergé’s Belgian homeland, he was not locked up as a subversive, although he might well have been, considering that a previous Tintin book criticized Mussolini and especially the Nazis. Instead Hergé elected to lay low, and continue writing adventures that avoided political comment. There was less work at that time for Hergé, allowing him to put careful unrushed craftsmanship into this album – exactly how he liked it. Unfortunately, this passive approach got Hergé into trouble after the war with people who wanted him to have taken a more active anti-Nazi stance.
The adventure was originally published serially and in black and white (as usual) in the French Belgian Le Soir, starting June 11, 1942, and ending January 14, 1943. It was colored and slightly reworked for its appearance in book form that year. Unlike some earlier books, it was not modernized, so what you’re seeing is very much what readers saw back then.
The first English translation was in 1952, but today’s version was translated by Michael Turner and Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper. American English translations were made in 1959 by Danièle Gorlin for Golden Press. This adventure was serialized and turned into book form. Unfortunately, it is out-of-print and rare, because this translation is in some ways better and more accurate. A pecularity of the British English version is that the nautical language is made more complicated, because the publishers felt British schoolchildren would find the inexact French terms unrealistic! This may be the only time such a thing could be said about Hergé’s French, which was usually as precise as any French professor’s!
Read the full-size hardcover one volume British translation – unless you can read any French, in which case the original is best. The full-size 9″ x 12″ book is the format in which Hergé meant it to be read. Buying hardcover is better; Tintin albums tend to get heavy use over the years and the paperbacks quickly get tattered.