Letters to Sartre
In these letters, de Beauvoir tells Sartre everything, tracing the extraordinary complications of their triangular love life; they reveal her not only as manipulative and dependent, but also as vulnerable, passionate, jealous, and committed.
Witness to My Life
Quiet Moments in a War
In the companion volume to the acclaimed Witness of my Life, Jean-Paul Sartre reveals his life as a soldier, a German prisoner, and a man of Resistance through letters between himself and his “beloved Beaver,” Simone de Beauvoir. Quiet Moments in a War tells the story of Jean-Paul Sartre at the peak of his powers and renown through the exchanging of ideas and intimacies with Simone de Beauvoir from 1940 to 1963. In the pages of this book, readers will find details on Sartre’s war and his path to fame with the publication of his major works. From September 1939 to June 1940, Sartre wrote Beauvoir almost daily as he waited from the frontlines for a German attack. While it was a time of fear and uncertainty, it doubled as a time of great productivity for Sartre as he completed the novel The Age of Reason and sketched out Being and Nothingness. This collection of the letters between Sartre and Beauvoir completes the extraordinary correspondence of one of modern history’s most celebrated couples while documenting the emergence of a great intellectual figure.
Disgraceful Affair
In this intimate memoir, Bianca Lamblin tells the story of her menage a trois with Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, and their abandonment of her, a Jew, at the onset of World War II.
Sex, Love, and Letters
When Judith G. Coffin discovered a virtually unexplored treasure trove of letters to Simone de Beauvoir from Beauvoir's international readers, it inspired Coffin to explore the intimate bond between the famed author and her reading public. This correspondence, at the heart of Sex, Love, and Letters, immerses us in the tumultuous decades from the late 1940s to the 1970s—from the painful aftermath of World War II to the horror and shame of French colonial brutality in Algeria and through the dilemmas and exhilarations of the early gay liberation and feminist movements. The letters also provide a glimpse into the power of reading and the power of readers to seduce their favorite authors. The relationship between Beauvoir and her audience proved especially long, intimate, and vexed. Coffin traces this relationship, from the publication of Beauvoir's acclaimed The Second Sex to the release of the last volume of her memoirs, offering an unfamiliar perspective on one of the most magnetic and polarizing philosophers of the twentieth century. Along the way, we meet many of the greatest writers of Beauvoir's generation—Hannah Arendt; Dominique Aury, author of The Story of O; François Mauriac, winner of the Nobel Prize and nemesis of Albert Camus; Betty Friedan; and, of course, Jean-Paul Sartre—bringing the electrically charged salon experience to life. Sex, Love, and Letters lays bare the private lives and political emotions of the letter writers and of Beauvoir herself. Her readers did not simply pen fan letters but, as Coffin shows, engaged in a dialogue that revealed intellectual and literary life to be a joint and collaborative production. "This must happen to you often, doesn't it?" wrote one. "That people write to you and tell you about their lives?"
