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The Image of Her

She’s living a perfect life – so why does Laurence feel so torn? 
 
Weekends in the country, weekdays in Paris – Laurence’s life features all the trappings of 1960s French bourgeoisie. She has money, a handsome husband, two daughters and a lover. She also has a successful career as an advertising copywriter, though her mind writes copy while she’s at home, and dreams of domesticity in the office. 
 
All her life she has strived to meet the expectations of others. But when her 10-year-old daughter, Catherine, starts to vocalise her despair about the unfairness of the world, Laurence must finally grapple with a life that prizes image over truth. 
 
Slim but powerful, this is a classic story of womanhood and its oppressors, parents and their children, and the quest for personal truth – by the iconic feminist Simone de Beauvoir. 
 
TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN 
 
'The best book I've read so far this year' The Times 
 
'Beautifully written, what surprises is how very modern this feminist rite of passage feels' Daily Mail 
 
‘A lethally moving portrait of female alienation and resistance’ Adam Thirlwell

This timeless and surprisingly jocular novel has the same richness of feeling and continental sophistication as Annie Ernaux’s auto-fiction, plus a dash of the wealthy carelessness found in F Scott Fitzgerald’s best known works… It’s the best book I’ve read so far this year

Only the best books can connect you to the past in the way this one does… And de Beauvoir’s writing takes your breath away

Country & Town House, *Christmas Gift Guide 2025*

Laurence is a woman who appears to live an ideal life. 
 
Weekends in the country, weekdays in Paris – her life features all the trappings of 1960s French bourgeoisie. She has money, a handsome husband, two daughters and a lover. She also has a successful career as an advertising copywriter, though her mind unbidden writes copy while she’s at home, and dreams of domesticity in the office. 
 
But Laurence is a woman whose experience of life has always been overwritten by the expectation of perfection. It is only when her 10-year-old daughter, Catherine, starts to vocalise her despair about the unfairness of the world that Laurence begins to act, finally grappling with a life that prizes image over truth. 
 
TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN

The Blood of Others

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Potent and vividly emotional, Simone de Beauvoir’s captivating novel questions freedom and individual responsibility in the face of brutality 
 
‘These carefree faces, on which we allowed our smiles to spread, were for others the mask of tragedy.’ 
 
Jean Blomart, patriot leader against the German forces of occupation, waits throughout an endless night for his wounded lover, Hélène, to die. Told through memories of his and her life, The Blood of Others paints an intense and moving picture of their love story and life in German occupied Paris during the Second World War. In the face of a seemingly unstoppable force, Hélène and Jean are confronted by the illusion of freedom and made to question their individual roles in the collective struggle against fascism, with devastating consequences. 
 
First published in 1945, this powerful novel resonates profoundly today and brings the ideas of one of the most important existentialist thinkers to life in spellbinding prose. 
 
With an Introduction by Ali Smith.

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 &quot;one is not born a woman; one becomes one&quot;.

&lsquo;These carefree faces, on which we allowed our smiles to spread, were for others the mask of tragedy.&rsquo; 
 
Jean Blomart, patriot leader against the German forces of occupation, waits throughout an endless night for his wounded lover, Hélène, to die. Told through memories of his and her life, The Blood of Others paints an intense and moving picture of their love story and life in German occupied Paris during the Second World War. In the face of a seemingly unstoppable force, Hélène and Jean are confronted by the illusion of freedom and made to question their individual roles in the collective struggle against fascism, with devastating consequences. 
 
First published in 1945, this powerful novel resonates profoundly today and brings the ideas of one of the most important existentialist thinkers to life in spellbinding prose. 
 
With an Introduction by Ali Smith.

The Prime of Life

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.

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&rsquo;s life. As relevant and penetrating as when first published, The Prime of Life offers rare insight into a truly fascinating mind.

The newly discovered novel from Simone de Beauvoir

The Inseparables

Vintage Classics French Series

When Andrée joins her school, Sylvie is immediately fascinated. Andrée is small for her age but walks with the confidence of an adult. 
 
The girls become close. They talk for hours about equality, justice, war and religion; they lose respect for their teachers; they build a world of their own. But as the girls grow into young women, the pressures of society mount, threatening everything. 
 
This novel was never published in Simone de Beauvoir's lifetime. It tells the story of the real-life friendship that shaped one of the most important thinkers and feminists of the twentieth century. 
 
'Slim, elegant, achingly tragic and unaffectedly lovely in its evocation of the closeness between girls - and the pressures that sunder them' Spectator 
 
VINTAGE FRENCH CLASSICS - five masterpieces of French fiction in gorgeous new gift editions. 
 
TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN - INTRODUCED BY DEBORAH LEVY

[An] exquisitely simple tale... The Inseparables invites us to cherish friendship, and how it makes and breaks us in a precarious and cruel world.

A short novel that will bring most to tears, it's loving, it's tender, it's heart wrenching and absolutely worth reading

Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. In 1929 she became the youngest person ever to obtain the agrégation in philosophy at the Sorbonne, placing second to Jean-Paul Sartre. She taught at the lycées 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.

The lost novel from the author of The Second Sex 
 
When Andrée joins her school, Sylvie is immediately fascinated. Andrée is small for her age, but walks with the confidence of an adult. The girls become close. They talk for hours about equality, justice, war and religion; they lose respect for their teachers; they build a world of their own. But as the girls grow into young women, the pressures of society mount, threatening everything. 
 
This novel was never published in Simone de Beauvoir's lifetime. It tells the story of the real-life friendship that shaped one of the most important thinkers and feminists of the twentieth century. 
 
'Slim, elegant, achingly tragic and unaffectedly lovely in its evocation of the closeness between girls - and the pressures that sunder them' Spectator 
 
VINTAGE FRENCH CLASSICS - six masterpieces of French fiction in gorgeous new gift editions. 
 
TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN - INTRODUCED BY DEBORAH LEVY

Misunderstanding in Moscow

Simone de Beauvoir is a feminist icon. She didn't just write the feminist book, she wrote the movement's bible, The Second Sex

A beautiful novel, depicting how aging intersects with life and love. Full marks

Born from the challenge of transmitting ideas and real experiences into a story, Misunderstanding in Moscow relates the atmosphere of the cold war and the growing anxiety of aging

Having experimented in life, De Beauvoir also experimented with literary form, finding new ways to write her autobiography and her philosophy simultaneously. Each of her novels, memoirs and works of philosophy was a new venture in this

The French writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir has drawn a nuanced portrait of an older couple

The concision of Misunderstanding in Moscow shows the psychological lucidity that distinguishes the best literary works of Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir (Author) 
Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. In 1929 she became the youngest person ever to obtain the agrégation in philosophy at the Sorbonne, placing second to Jean-Paul Sartre. She taught at the lycées 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 captivating novella about long-term relationships, getting older and how to live a good life, by the great Simone de Beauvoir. 
 
Nicole and André, a retired French couple, take a summer holiday to Russia. It is the 1960s and Russia is a beautiful, complicated place. Their guide is Macha, André's daughter from a previous relationship - a woman they both love. Adventure, inspiration, good food and good vodka are promised. 
 
Once thrilled by their romance, Nicole and André have now become too used to each other. Both harbour a growing feeling of not being fully understood - of being alone. Father and daughter engage in the grand debates of East-West relations, nationalism and socialism. But getting older, long-term relationships and how to enjoy life turn out to be the more pressing issues.

What Is Existentialism?

'It is possible for man to snatch the world from the darkness of absurdity' 
 
How should we think and act in the world? These writings on the human condition by one of the twentieth century's great philosophers explore the absurdity of our notions of good and evil, and show instead how we make our own destiny simply by being. 
 
One of twenty new books in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets, satirists to Zen Buddhists.

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".

How should we think and act in the world? These writings on the human condition by one of the twentieth century's great philosophers explore the absurdity of our notions of good and evil, and show instead how we make our own destiny simply by being. 
 
GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

The Second Sex

Required reading for anyone who believes in the equality of the sexes, The Second Sex is the crowning text of second wave feminism

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

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

A fine piece of work, a lucid translation

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

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'

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.

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

Everyone who cares about freedom and justice for women should read The Second Sex

Still considered the Holy Grail of modern feminist thought

The Second Sex remains the greatest feminist tract of the century

Still an important book. It had a great effect on me

A landmark in the history of feminism, considered scandalous in its day for its frank treatment of female sexuality, and instantly banned by the Vatican.

This groundbreaking study of women is a classic, transforming perceptions of gender. It may not be a new release but it is every bit as powerful now as it was then.

Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. In 1929 she became the youngest person ever to obtain the agrégation in philosophy at the Sorbonne, placing second to Jean-Paul Sartre. She taught at the lycées 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.

TRANSLATED BY CONSTANCE BORDE AND SHEILA MALOVANY-CHEVALLIER 
ANNOTATED AND INTRODUCED BY MARTINE REID 
 
'Everyone who cares about freedom and justice for women should read The Second Sex' Guardian 
 
Simone de Beauvoir famously wrote, 'One is not born, but rather becomes, woman'. In this groundbreaking work of feminism she examines the limits of female freedom and explodes our deeply ingrained beliefs about femininity. Liberation, she argues, entails challenging traditional perceptions of the social relationship between the sexes and, crucially, in achieving economic independence. 
 
Drawing on sociology, anthropology and biology, The Second Sex is as important and relevant today as when it was first published in 1949.

The Second Sex (Vintage Feminism Short Edition)

Read Simone de Beauvoir’s classic work of second wave feminism, in an abridged, digestible form.

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'

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

Vintage Feminism: classic feminist texts in short form 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY NATALIE HAYNES 
 
When this book was first published in 1949 it was to outrage and scandal. Never before had the case for female liberty been so forcefully and successfully argued. De Beauvoir’s belief that ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, woman’ switched on light bulbs in the heads of a generation of women and began a fight for greater equality and economic independence. These pages contain the key passages of the book that changed perceptions of women forever. 
 
TRANSLATED BY CONSTANCE BORDE AND SHEILA MALOVANY-CHEVALLIER 
ANNOTATED AND INTRODUCED BY MARTINE REID

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

In her memoirs, Simone de Beavoir created a remarkable portrait of a twentieth-century woman's struggle for independence

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86) French philosopher, novelist, and essayist, the lifelong companion of Jean-Paul Sartre. Beauvoir's first book, L'Invitée, was published in 1943. In 1945 Beauvoir published Le Sang des autres, a novel dealing with the question of political involvement. Beauvoir's breakthrough work was semiautobiographical Les Mandarins (1954), which won the Prix Concourt. Roman Catholic authorities banned it and Beauvoir's feminist classic The Second Sex (1949), in which Beauvoir argued that "one is not born a woman; one becomes one".  In 1958 Beauvoir published Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée, the first of four volume memoirs. She described her happy childhood, intellectual development and of course Sartre. It was followed by La Force de l'âge (1960), La Force des choses (1963), and Tout compte fait (1972),

A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in the 1920s. Simone de Beavoir describes her early life, from her birth in Paris in 1908 to her student days at the Sorbonne, where she met Jean-Paul sartre - 'the dream-companion I had longed for since I was fifteen'.

THE SECOND SEX is a hymn to human freedom and a classic of the existentialist movement. It also has claims to be the most important s ingle book in the history of feminism. In the forty years since its publication De Beauvoir's then revolutionary thesis - that the subordination of women is not a fact of nature but the product of social conditioning has become part of our everyday thinking.

Letters To Sartre

An irresistible invitation to get inside one of the 20th century’s most infamous, and most fascinating, relationships.

There is more than a whiff of Les Liaisons Dangereuses about these pages

This is a vivid piece of unexpurgated social history, and an opportunity to hear a vigorous and innovative thinker...speaking in her abrasive, touching, breathtakingly candid private voice

Wonderful… what really shines through is de Beauvoir’s simultaneously maintained autonomy and symbiotic relationship with Sartre, her “beloved little one”, along with their total commitment to a life spent in pursuit of ideals, together

In 1983 de Beauvoir published Sartre's letters, maintaining that her own to him had been lost. They were found by de Beauvoir's adopted daughter, and published to a storm of controversy in France. Tracing the emotional and triangular complications of her life with Sartre, the letters reveal her not only as manipulative and dependent but Simonealso as vulnerable, passionate, jealous and committed.

Woman of Genius

Simone de Beauvoir

Carol Cosman

A great living document of America in the forties

Her travel diary records with fresh, hungry, sensuous curiosity the cultural climate of postwar America just before the Cold War closed down. No writer could be better company in that complex, vanished world than Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir in New York City in 1947: Like all Europeans she begins to lament the obvious the hard edges, the crude self-involvement, the absence of café life and then suddenly she gives herself up to the aloneness of the city with a responsiveness astonishing for the brilliance it generates. Fifty years later it is still exciting to be in her company as she discovers unexpected love for the capital of the new world.

For women, and men, who want to experience vicariously Jack Kerouac's open road with less macho romanticism and more existential savvy, America Day by Day, hidden from us for nearly 50 years, comes to the reader like a dusty bottle of Vintage French cognac, asking only to be uncorked

de Beauvoir’s reflections are discerning, thought-provoking, and in places even funny, like Bill Bryson if he were a nerdy Frenchwoman with a taste for philosophy… every page offers a deft observation… [a] blazing book

In 1947 Simone de Beauvoir took a road trip across America. 
 
She travelled from coast to coast, from New York to Hollywood, taking in New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana and Washington DC. She rode a pony through the Grand Canyon, listened to jazz in New Orleans and visited the nightclubs of Chicago. And she captured the entire experience in her journal. 
 
This captivating book is that journal and an immersive portrait of postwar America. Beauvoir was disturbed by the poverty and segregation she encountered and at the same time delighted by American energy and friendliness. 
 
Intimate, warm, and compulsively readable, this is travel writing from the iconic feminist and thinker, Simone de Beauvoir. 
 
On New York: 'I walk between the steep cliffs at the bottom of a canyon where no sun penetrates: it's permeated by a salt smell. Human history is not inscribed on these carefully calibrated buildings: They are closer to prehistoric caves than to the houses of Paris or Rome.' 
 
On Los Angeles: 'I watch the Mexican dances and eat chilli con carne, which takes the roof off my mouth, I drink the tequila and I'm utterly dazed with pleasure.'

Simone de Beauvoir

Praise for America Day by Day

A great living document of America in the forties

Her travel diary records with fresh, hungry, sensuous curiosity the cultural climate of postwar America just before the Cold War closed down. No writer could be better company in that complex, vanished world than Si ...

Simone de Beauvoir in New York City in 1947: Like all Europeans she begins to lament the obvious the hard edges, the crude self-involvement, the absence of café life and then suddenly she gives herself up to the alo ...

A great living document of America in the forties

Her travel diary records with fresh, hungry, sensuous curiosity the cultural climate of postwar America just before the Cold War closed down. No writer could be better company in that complex, vanished world than Si ...

Simone de Beauvoir in New York City in 1947: Like all Europeans she begins to lament the obvious the hard edges, the crude self-involvement, the absence of café life and then suddenly she gives herself up to the alo ...

A great living document of America in the forties

Her travel diary records with fresh, hungry, sensuous curiosity the cultural climate of postwar America just before the Cold War closed down. No writer could be better company in that complex, vanished world than Si ...

Simone de Beauvoir in New York City in 1947: Like all Europeans she begins to lament the obvious the hard edges, the crude self-involvement, the absence of café life and then suddenly she gives herself up to the alo ...

Books by Simone de Beauvoir

Series by Simone de Beauvoir

Brief Encounters

Articles featuring Simone de Beauvoir

Where to start with French Classics

The ultimate feminist books reading list

The Inseparables: How Simone de Beauvoir’s long-lost love story came to light

9 classics to celebrate women in translation

10 classics to celebrate International Women’s Day

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