The Prime of Life (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Green, Peter; De Beauvoir, Simone

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241705398 ISBN 13: 9780241705391

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2024

Synopsis

The second volume in Simone de Beauvoir’s celebrated autobiography recalls her formative years in Paris when she began to emerge as a public figure

First published in 1960, The Prime of Life offers an intimate, captivating picture of Simone de Beauvoir in her twenties, thirties and forties. Beginning as a recent graduate from the Sorbonne teaching high-school girls, we see de Beauvoir revel in the freedom her new financial independence brings. We see her and Jean-Paul Sartre recognise the powerful romantic and intellectual partnership they have found in one another, as they fall in love and define their own unconventional parameters. The Second World War comes, bringing austerity, violence and questions of the reality of freedom and individual responsibility into de Beauvoir’s life. As relevant and penetrating as when first published, The Prime of Life offers rare insight into a truly fascinating mind.

About this title

About the Author

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86) was a French philosopher, novelist and essayist, and the lifelong companion of Jean-Paul Sartre. De Beauvoir's first book, L'Invitée, was published in 1943. In 1945 she published Le Sang des autres, a novel dealing with the question of political involvement. De Beauvoir's breakthrough work was the semi-autobiographical Les Mandarins (1954), which won the Prix Goncourt. Roman Catholic authorities banned it and de Beauvoir's feminist classic The Second Sex (1949), in which de Beauvoir argued that "one is not born a woman; one becomes one".

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241705398
• ISBN 13: 9780241705391
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 656