Simone de Beauvoir: a biography
Deirdre Bair
The definitive official biography of de Beauvoir, drawn from extensive interviews towards the end of her life, as well as previously unseen (and still unpublished) private correspondence with both Jean-Paul Sartre and Nelson Algren. A superb overview of de Beauvoir’s fiction, her philosophy, and the buzz of intellectual life in Paris before, during and after the Second World War.
Simone de Beauvoir
(Lives of Modern Women)
Lisa Appignanesi
A short, compelling and accessible biography.
Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman
Toril Moi
An academic approach to de Beauvoir’s life and works, from a leading feminist critic.
If You Loved This, You Might Like …
The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing
A classic of feminist and political history, this is the story of a young divorced novelist, Anna Wulf, who, faced with writer’s block and fed up with failed relationships, fights her fears about descending into madness by writing down her feelings and experiences in four coloured notebooks: black for writing, red for politics, yellow for relationships and blue for diarizing the everyday. Eventually a fifth, the golden notebook, supersedes the others and helps Anna find her identity.
A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf
First published in 1928, Woolf’s feminist treatise remains, sadly, still pertinent in many respects. Like de Beauvoir’s work, this is a landmark of women’s writing but, unlike The Second Sex, it is very short and witty, a great introduction to twentieth-century feminist writing.
Gigi and Chéri
Colette
Another great French writer, who put women’s experience, often scandalously, at the heart of her books. These two novels show two different aspects of a courtesan’s life in early twentieth-century France: that of the young woman training for such a life but resisting it, and that of the older woman, eking out the last days of her relationship with a younger man whom she has been training in the art of love.
The Outsider
Albert Camus
A classic work of existentialism, by a writer who claimed he wasn’t an existentialist. Meursault lives his life nonchalantly and with little engagement with anything, not even the death of his mother, until an act of violence changes his life for ever. A book that is easy to read but difficult to forget.
The Plague
Albert Camus
One of the most readable of all existentialist novels, The Plague is the story of Oran, a city in Algeria that is taken over by a plague. It is also an allegory for the occupation of France in the Second World War. The novel’s narrator is Dr Bernard Rieux who must battle the authorities’ indifference in order to save the city and its citizens.
Being and Nothingness
Jean-Paul Sartre
It is almost impossible to talk about the life of Simone de Beauvoir without acknowledging the influence upon her of Jean-Paul Sartre, her constant companion, both intellectually and emotionally, for some fifty years. Being and Nothingness, which Sartre wrote largely while in a prisoner-of-war camp during the early part of the Second World War, is widely seen as being the ‘Bible’ of existentialism, a hugely influential work of philosophy which challenges the reader to confront the fundamental dilemmas of human freedom, responsibility and action. Although Sartre increasingly distanced himself from Being and Nothingness towards the end of his life, for de Beauvoir it remained the defining model of her own beliefs, the basis of everything that she wrote, both fiction and memoir.
The Words
Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre’s autobiography of his childhood is funny as well as thought-provoking.
Find Out More
To experience de Beauvoir’s world, visit the Left Bank of Paris, especially the cafés and bars. Notable locations include the Café de Flore, 172 boulevard Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris (http://www.cafe-de-flore.com) and Les Deux Magots, 170 boulevard Saint-Germain, 75006.
Cimetière de Montparnasse, 3 boulevard Edgar Quinet, 75014 Paris
De Beauvoir was buried in the same grave as Sartre. It can be visited at the Cimetière de Montparnasse, along with those of Samuel Beckett, Man Ray, Jean Seberg and Guy de Maupassant.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
A dynamic online reference with information about de Beauvoir as well as Sartre, Camus and existentialism. See http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2004/ entries/beauvoir/.
The Blood of Others
Directed by Claude Chabrol, this adaptation of Le sang des autres starred Jodie Foster and Sam Neill.
www.theparisreview.com/media/4444_DEBEAUVOIR.pdf
A long and detailed interview with the author, which took place in 1965. Fascinating.
About the Author
Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. She took a degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne in 1929, and was placed second to Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom her name was to be inextricably linked for the next fifty years. De Beauvoir taught in Marseilles and Rouen during the 1930s and in Paris during the war. After Liberation she emerged as one of the leading figures of the Existentialist movement and, with Sartre, Camus and many others, was to set the course of Left Bank intellectual life for many decades thereafter.
Simone de Beauvoir’s first novel, She Came to Stay, was published in 1943. The book explored a woman’s quest for moral and intellectual self-determination, a theme which was to run throughout all her work. Author of six novels, de Beauvoir won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1954 for The Mandarins. The Second Sex, her classic account of the status and nature of women, was published in 1949; hugely influential, it confirmed de Beauvoir’s role as a pioneer in the development of post-war feminism. Her other writings include her four-volume autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The Prime of Life, Force of Circumstance and All Said and Done, and a moving account of her relationship with her dying mother, A Very Easy Death.
In her later years de Beauvoir was actively involved in many socialist and feminist causes, and in 1975 was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for ‘writers who have promoted the concept of individual liberty’. She died in 1986.
By the Same Author
FICTION
She Came to Stay
The Blood of Others
All Men Are Mortal
The Mandarins
Les Belles Images
When Things of the Spirit Come First
Who Shall Die?
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
The Prime of Life
Force of Circumstance
All Said and Done
Old Age
A Very Easy Death
The Second Sex
The Ethics of Ambiguity
Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre
Letters to Sartre
A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren
Must We Burn Sade?
America Day by Day
The Long March
Correspondence Beauvoir-Bost: Un Amour de Jeunesse
Journal de Guerre
Les écrits de Simone de Beauvoir
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