Get to Know: Simone de Beauvoir

For the Get to Know Series, we’ve gathered together our collection of an author’s books and information about them, their work, and background. Combined with other materials such as reviews, interviews, discussions, and more, we hope it will become a resource to find out more about their life and works, and place their books in context.

Our second post in the series, to mark International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, is on Simone de Beauvoir.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist and feminist activist. The Second Sex, published in 1949, is considered a foundational work in the history of feminism.

The Beauvoir Series, published by the University of Illinois Press, is a multi-volume collaborative project involving an international team of scholars in philosophy and French language and literature. The series provides scholarly editions in English of Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical texts, including some only recently discovered, and ranging from her early writings as a philosophy student at the Sorbonne through her later essays on existentialist ethics and finally to a preface written in the last year of her life.

Political Writings


“This remarkable collection will be most surprising and provocative for thinkers yearning for a political philosophy to accompany Beauvoir’s feminist and ethical philosophies. These essays, many of them appearing for the first time in English, make clear Beauvoir’s turn away from the abstract philosophical thought and toward political engagement.”-Kelly Oliver, author of Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be Human

Philosophical Writings


“This work is a treasure. Now, English-speaking readers who are not fluent in French will have the opportunity to read these selections for themselves. Each piece is preceded by a very helpful introduction and commentary by a well-known Beauvoir scholar, who places the piece in context and notes how it relates to one or more of Beauvoir’s better-known works that have long been translated into English. Each selection also has its own translator (distinct from the commentator). The translations read beautifully, and they also have appropriately detailed scholarly notes, which make the selections even more accessible to students. . . . There is no other book to compete with this one.”-Claudia Card, editor of Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir

Feminist Writings


“Excellent introductions by leading scholars carefully locate these works in their own contexts and also demonstrate why we should still attend to Beauvoir’s thinking today. This collection is necessary reading not only for those interested in Simone de Beauvoir’s thinking but for all who are interested in the emergence of contemporary feminism.”-Sonia Kruks, author of Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity

“The Useless Mouths” and Other Literary Writings


“This collection of Beauvoir’s literary works not only presents us with further evidence of the importance of Beauvoir’s existentialist literary style but also gives new insight into her thinking about aesthetics, existentialism, intersubjectivity, aging, and her relationship with Sartre. In addition, here we see some of her most incisive engagements with her critics and critics of existentialism more generally.”-Kelly Oliver, author of Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be Human

Other books about Beauvoir

Sex, Love, and Letters

Writing Simone de Beauvoir


When Judith G. Coffin discovered a virtually unexplored treasure trove of letters to Simone de Beauvoir from Beauvoir’s international readers, it inspired Coffin to explore the intimate bond between the famed author and her reading public. This correspondence immerses us in the tumultuous decades from the late 1940s to the 1970s—from the painful aftermath of World War II to the horror and shame of French colonial brutality in Algeria and through the dilemmas and exhilarations of the early gay liberation and feminist movements. The letters also provide a glimpse into the power of reading and the power of readers to seduce their favorite authors.

Politics with Beauvoir

Freedom in the Encounter


Lori Jo Marso treats Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist theory and practice as part of her political theory, arguing that freedom is Beauvoir’s central concern and that this is best apprehended through Marso’s notion of the encounter. From intimate to historical, always affective though often fraught and divisive, Beauvoir’s encounters, Marso shows, exemplify freedom as a shared, relational, collective practice. Politics with Beauvoir gives us a new Beauvoir and a new way of thinking about politics—as embodied and coalitional.

Beauvoir and Her Sisters

The Politics of Women’s Bodies in France


Drawing on feminist writings by Simone de Beauvoir, feminist reviews from the women’s liberation movement, and cultural reproductions from French women’s fashion and beauty magazines, Sandra Reineke illustrates how print media created new spaces for political and social ideas. This sustained study extends from 1944, when women received the right to vote in France, to 1993, when the French government outlawed anti-abortion activities. Touching on the relationship between consumer culture and feminist practice, Reineke’s analysis of a selection of women’s writings underlines how these texts challenged traditional gender models and ideals.

Resources

The International Simone de Beauvoir Society


Founded in 1981, the International Simone de Beauvoir Society hosts an annual international conference to discuss Beauvoir’s philosophical, literary, and political works and is also home to the peer-reviewed journal, Simone de Beauvoir Studies. The Society has a long history of international membership with hundreds of members from all over the world. The SdB Society is allied with the Modern Language Association of America (MLA). 

Find them on Twitter: @SdBSociety