Beauvoir, Simone de (redirected from Simone de Beauvoir)

Beauvoir, Simone de (sēmôn` də bōvwär`), 1908–86, French author. A leading exponent of the existentialist movement, she is closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre. Beauvoir taught philosophy at several colleges until 1943, after which she devoted herself to writing. Her novels All Men Are Mortal (1946, tr. 1955), The Blood of Others (1946, tr. 1948), and The Mandarins (1955, tr. 1956) are interpretations of the existential dilemma. Among her most celebrated works is the profound analysis of the status of women, The Second Sex (1949–50, tr. 1953). Her study The Marquis de Sade (tr. 1953) is a brilliant, perceptive portrait. Her monumental treatise The Coming of Age (1970, tr. 1972) is an exhaustive historical consideration of the social treatment of the aged in many cultures. Beauvoir's autobiographical writings include Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958, tr. 1959), The Prime of Life (tr. 1962), Force of Circumstance (1963, tr. 1964), A Very Easy Death (1964, tr. 1966), and All Said and Done (tr. 1974). She also edited Sartre's letters to her (tr. 1994).

Bibliography

See biography by D. Bair (1990); S. de Beauvoir, ed., Quiet Moments in a War: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir, 1940–1963 (1994); studies by E. Marks (1973), L. Appignanesi (1988), K. and E. Fullbrook (1994), and H. Rowley (2005).

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Beauvoir, Simone (Lucie-Ernestine-Marie-Bertrand) de

(born Jan. 9, 1908, Paris, France—died April 14, 1986, Paris) French writer and feminist. As a student at the Sorbonne, she met Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom she formed a lifelong intellectual and romantic bond. She is known primarily for her treatise The Second Sex (1949), a scholarly and passionate plea for the abolition of what she called the myth of the “eternal feminine”; the book became a classic of feminist literature. She also wrote four admired volumes of autobiography (1958–72), philosophical works that explore themes of existentialism, and fiction, notably The Mandarins (1954, Prix Goncourt). The Coming of Age (1970) is a bitter reflection on society's indifference to the elderly.