Simone de Beauvoir was a French author and philosopher whose works spanned genres. Her writing, encompassing metaphysical novels and foundational feminist treatises, explored the complexities of female experience and societal structures. Beauvoir deeply engaged with the dilemma between the joy of living and the necessity of writing, often using autobiographical elements to examine her own existence. Her theoretical essays and political reflections established her as a pivotal figure in feminist philosophy.
The book features a collection of insights from Simone de Beauvoir's early philosophical journey, as documented in her diary from 1926-27. It is coedited by notable scholars, including Barbara Klaw, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, and Margaret A. Simons, who provide context and analysis of Beauvoir's formative years. The work not only highlights her existentialist foundations but also reflects on themes of feminism and race, offering a deeper understanding of her influence on philosophy and literature.
On a visit to America in 1947, Simone de Beauvoir met the left-wing writer Nelson Algren and an intense, transatlantic love affair began. The couple met only once or twice a year, but between liaisons, de Beauvoir wrote Algren hundreds of letters; these letters are reproduced here.
The philosopher's writings on, and engagement with, twentieth century feminism By turns surprising and revelatory, this sixth volume in the Beauvoir Series presents newly discovered writings and lectures while providing new translations and contexts for Simone de Beauvoir's more familiar writings. Spanning Beauvoir's career from the 1940s through 1986, the pieces explain the paradoxes in her political and feminist stances, including her famous 1972 announcement of a "conversion to feminism" after decades of activism on behalf of women. Feminist Writings documents and contextualizes Beauvoir's thinking, writing, public statements, and activities in the services of causes like French divorce law reform and the rights of women in the Iranian Revolution. In addition, the volume provides new insights into Beauvoir's complex thinking and illuminates her historic role in linking the movements for sexual freedom, sexual equality, homosexual rights, and women's rights in France.
Simone de Beauvoir, still a teen, began a diary while a philosophy student at the Sorbonne. Written in 1926-27—before Beauvoir met Jean-Paul Sartre—the diaries reveal previously unknown details about her life and times and offer critical insights into her early intellectual interests, philosophy, and literary works. Presented for the first time in translation, this fully annotated first volume of the Diary includes essays from Barbara Klaw and Margaret A. Simons that address its philosophical, historical, and literary significance. It remains an invaluable resource for tracing the development of Beauvoir’s independent thinking and her influence on philosophy, feminism, and the world.
In her second major essay, renowned French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir illustrates the ethics of existentialism by outlining a series of 'ways of being'. In this classic introduction to existentialist thought, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Ethics of Ambiguity' simultaneously pays homage to and grapples with her French contemporaries, philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, by arguing that the freedoms in existentialism carry with them certain ethical responsibilities.
In her most famous novel, Simone de Beauvoir does not flinch in her look at Parisian intellectual society at the end of the Second World War. Drawing on those who surrounded her—Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Arthur Koestler—and her passionate love affair with Nelson Algren, Beauvoir dissects the emotional and philosophical currents of her time. At once an engrossing drama and an intriguing political tale, The Mandarins is the emotional odyssey of a woman torn between her inner desire and her public life. The Mandarins won France's highest literary prize, the Prix Goncourt.
“Like man, woman is a human being.” When The Second Sex was first published in Paris in 1949—groundbreaking, risqué, brilliantly written and strikingly modern—it provoked both outrage and inspiration. The Independent Woman contains three key chapters of Beauvoir’s masterwork, which illuminate the feminine condition and identify practical social reforms for gender equality. It captures the essence of the spirited manifesto that switched on light bulbs in the heads of a generation of women and continues to exert profound influence on feminists today.
