BEAUVOIR Simone de

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was a French philosopher, novelist and writer of memoirs and essays. Her father encouraged her to study and she passed the agrégation (public education competitive examination) in philosophy in 1929. She met Jean-Paul Sartre, who would later become her partner, when she was a student in Paris. She was a prolific writer of diverse works, including essays, autobiographical accounts and novels, in which she exposed her philosophical, political and feminist beliefs. In 1949, she published The Second Sex, viewed as one of the foundational texts of the feminist movement. She was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1954 for The Mandarins. In her autobiography The Prime of Life (1963), Beauvoir recalls her visits to Le Havre with Sartre in the 1930s.

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