Simone de Beauvoir, b. Paris, Jan. 9, 1908, d. Apr. 14, 1986, was a French writer and feminist. A disciple and consort of Jean Paul Sartre, she played a leading part in the existentialist movement. After receiving a degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne in 1929, Beauvoir was a teacher before she turned to fiction with She Came to Stay (1943; Eng. trans., 1949), a novel illustrating the existentialist idea of freedom through an autonomous act.
She further elaborated on this philosophy in The Blood of Others (1945; Eng. trans., 1948), All Men Are Mortal (1946; Eng. trans., 1955), and The Mandarins (1954; Eng. trans., 1956), a fictionalized account of Jean Paul Sartre and his existentialist circle, for which she won the Prix Goncourt. Her most important nonfictional work is The Second Sex (1949; Eng. trans., 1953), a comprehensive study of the secondary role of women in society.
The book is widely credited with inspiring the women’s liberation movements–both in Europe and the United States–that began in the late 1960s. Beauvoir later published a distinguished series of autobiographical volumes–Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (1958; Eng. trans., 1959), The Prime of Life (1960; Eng. trans., 1962), The Force of Circumstance (1963; Eng. trans., 1965)–which describe her own life and that of her contemporaries from her early twenties on.
She continued in a similar vein in A Very Easy Death (1964; Eng. trans., 1966), about her mother’s last days; The Coming of Age (1970; Eng. trans., 1972), in which she comes to grips with approaching old age; and All Said and Done (1972; Eng. trans., 1974). In their entirety, Simone de Beauvoir’s works form an inestimable intellectual history of contemporary France.