Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) always stood in the shadow of her lover and teacher, Jean Paul Sartre, despite the fact that she was a brilliant writer and philosopher in her own right. She described their unique partnership as 'the one undoubted success in my life'. It is, however, her monumental study The Second Sex and her four-volume autobiography which made her a cult figure of the Feminist movement. Above everything in her writing and political activism, she valued her own intellectual honesty. Book jacket.