Available Formats
Letters to Sartre
By (Author) Simone de Beauvoir
Edited by Quintin Hoare
Skyhorse Publishing
Arcade Publishing
9th August 2012
United States
General
Non Fiction
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000
848.91409
Paperback
544
Width 152mm, Height 229mm, Spine 33mm
907g
Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre formed one of the most famous literary couples of the twentieth century. Their relationship took on the quality of legend and served as a model of openness and honesty for countless men and women. Sartre was revered during his lifetime as a paradigm of the modern philosophe and intellectual, but since de Beauvoirs death in 1986, her literary reputation has threatened to eclipse Sartres. Her work The Second Sex is, by any standard, one of the most important and influential books of the twentieth century.
When these private and revealing letters were published in France in 1990, they caused a storm of controversy. Here de Beauvoir tells Sartre everything, tracing the extraordinary complications of their triangular love life. These letters reveal de Beauvoir not only as manipulative and dependent, but also as vulnerable, passionate, jealous, and committed. This reissue of a New York Times Notable Book will inspire philosophers, writers, and lovers of literature for decades to come.
Simone de Beauvoir taught philosophy at the Sorbonne between 1931 and 1943. Her many books include The Second Sex, the novels She Came to Stay and The Mandarins, and her great autobiographical writings from Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter to Old Age. De Beauvoir died in 1986. Quintin Hoare is the director of the Bosnian Institute and has translated numerous works by Sartre, Antonio Gramsci, and other French authors. He lives in the UK.