Essays & Letters

Simon 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 philosopher and intellectual, but since her death de Beauvoir's figure loomed increasingly larger, and her literary reputation threatens to eclipse his. Her "The Second Sex" is, by any standard, one of the most important and influential books of the twentieth century. When these 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 her not only as manipulative and dependent, but also as vulnerable, passionate, jealous, and committed. De Beauvoir provides a sense of life in Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Pres among the French intellectual and literary elite from 1930 till 1963.