The Prime of Life

Peter Green, Simone de Beauvoir

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English

Penguin
07 January 2025

Biography; Autobiography: literary; Memoirs; Literary studies: from c 1900 -; Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers

Series: Penguin Modern Classics

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.

By: Peter Green, Simone de Beauvoir
Imprint: Penguin
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 26mm
Weight: 452g
ISBN: 9780241705391
ISBN 10: 0241705398
Series: Penguin Modern Classics
Pages: 656
Publication Date: 07 January 2025
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

"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'Invitee, 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\""."