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Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. In 1929 she became the youngest person ever to obtain the agregation in philosophy at the Sorbonne, placing second to Jean-Paul Sartre. She taught at the lycees at Marseille and Rouen from 1931-1937, and in Paris from 1938-1943. After the war, she emerged as one of the leaders of the existentialist movement, working with Sartre on Les Temps Mordernes. The author of several books including The Mandarins (1957) which was awarded the Prix Goncourt, de Beauvoir was one of the most influential thinkers of her generation. She died in 1986.
A masterpiece * Vogue * Discovering The Second Sex was like an explosion in my skull, shattering illusions bred in a conventional fifties childhood...Re-reading the book now I realise how much of it is still entirely relevant, and that (despite advances) women are as much in need of liberation as ever -- Bel Mooney De Beauvoir was not just a genius as a theorist. She dared to live it. Challenging conventional marriage and sexual practice, she used her own experience to explore the emotional costs of jealousy, attachment, monogamy, bohemianism, sexuality, of love -- Susie Orbach A fine piece of work, a lucid translation * Independent * A fresh, much expanded, more intelligible book which repays re-reading by adherents of the old version, and cries out for attention from young women who have not been exposed to this most powerful of feminist thinkers * Irish Times * On publication in 1949, the book shocked and scandalised society, 'The Vatican put the book on the Index; Albert Camus accused Simone De beauvoir of having made the French male look ridiculous... But that didn't stop sales - it sold 20,000 copies in its first week. When The Second Sex was published in the US it leaped onto the the bestseller lists' * London Review of Books * The effect of the new translation, which should be applauded, is to make Beauvoir more herself: to add longer paragraphs, to take away the friendly pronouns added in by the last translator, to keep in dense philosophical riffs that had been omitted before. The book is more demanding than it was before, which is to say more stylish, more itself. * SLATE * There is no doubt that De Beauvoir's The Second Sex is one of the great texts of women's liberation; and that her refusal to abide by the dictates of her era...were ahead of their time -- Joanna Briscoe * Guardian * Everyone who cares about freedom and justice for women should read The Second Sex * Guardian * Still considered the Holy Grail of modern feminist thought * New York Times *
