Simone de Beauvoir

Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–86), French writer and a leading exponent of Existentialism and the role of women in politics and intellectual life. Her best-known works are The Second Sex (1953) and The Mandarins (1956). She also wrote an autobiographical trilogy, and a moving account of her mother's death, A Very Easy Death (1966). Jean-Paul Sartre was her close associate.

See also: Existentialism.