Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography - Softcover

Bair, Deirdre

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671741802 ISBN 13: 9780671741808

Publisher: Touchstone, 1991

Synopsis

This definitive biography is based on five years of interviews with de Beauvoir, and is written with her full cooperation. Bair penetrates the mystique of this brilliant and often paradoxical woman, who has been called one of the great minds of the 20th century, and surely, one of the most famously unconventional figures of her generation. "As a reference work . . . Simone de Beauvoir can be considered definitive".--The Atlantic. 16-page photographic insert.

About this title

About the Author:

Deirdre Bair was a literary journalist before taking an MA and PhD at Colombia University. Since then, she has been a university professor and has lectured and written extensively on contemporary British and French literature.

From Library Journal:

Bair, author of Samuel Beckett (a 1979 National Book Award winner), met with de Beauvoir for six years to compile this detailed biography of the writer best known for The Second Sex . She includes generous details about de Beauvoir's less attractive personal attributes (her slovenliness and self-centered behavior) and her questionable record during World War II. The book is an objective recording of events that shaped the life of a woman who, willingly, played down her own significant contributions to contemporary philosophical and political thought so as to remain Sartre's intellectual alter ego. Generous annotations document every chapter and provide material suggesting further research. An interesting, thought-provoking work that should dispel many myths, but Bair might well have given us a greater feel for the woman and emphasized her feminist stance.
- Danielle Mihram, Univ. of Southern California Lib.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0671741802
• ISBN 13: 9780671741808
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 718