Simone de Beauvoir

French philosopher, social theorist and activist (1908–1986)

OverviewAI-generated

Simone de Beauvoir was a French journalist, novelist, autobiographer, and essayist. Born Simonne Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir in the 6th arrondissement of Paris on 9 January 1908, she was educated at the University of Paris, Lycée Fénelon, the Sorbonne, and the Catholic University of Paris. She was a citizen of France and identified with atheism, feminism, and existentialism.

Her notable works include The Second Sex, The Mandarins, She Came to Stay, and Pyrrhus and Cineas. She received the Prix Goncourt, the Jerusalem Prize, and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. She was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Alfred Adler and was in an unmarried partnership with Sartre, Claude Lanzmann, and Nelson Algren.

De Beauvoir died of pneumonia and pulmonary edema at Hôpital Cochin in the 14th arrondissement of Paris on 14 April 1986. She is buried at Montparnasse Cemetery. Her native language was French.

Synthesized by Vinony from 42 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, TMDb, Wikiquote, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born: 9 January 1908
Died: 14 April 1986
Works: 339

Top works

Besteen odola
Cuando predomina lo espiritual
Les belles images
Les inséparables
She Came to Stay

via Open Library + Wikidata

Film & TV

Writing · Paris, France

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory

Known for

Le deuxième sexe : Sur les traces de Simone de Beauvoir — Self (Archive footage)2025
Looking for Simone — Self (archive footage)2024
La TV des 70's : Quand Giscard était président — Self (archive footage)2022
Miúcha, The Voice of Bossa Nova — Self2022
The Century of Icons — Self (archive footage)2022
Beauvoir, l'aventure d'être soi — Self : Philosopher (archive footage)2021
Delphine and Carole — Self (archive footage)2020
The Lévi-Strauss Century — Self (archive footage)2016
Hôtel La Louisiane — Self (archive footage)2015
Simone de Beauvoir: Two Interviews2012

via TMDB

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Female
Origin: France
Active from: 1908
Active to: 1986

Discogs

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 185
Total plays: 2,743

Similar artists

Eva MenasseBenedict Wellsbell hooksHengameh YaghoobifarahMariana Leky

via Last.fm · Simone de Beauvoir

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python
· 2020 · cited 36,455x
PLINK: A Tool Set for Whole-Genome Association and Population-Based Linkage Analyses
· 2007 · cited 31,393x
The ERA5 global reanalysis
· 2020 · cited 24,157x
QUANTUM ESPRESSO: a modular and open-source software project for quantum simulations of materials
· 2009 · cited 22,949x
Geant4—a simulation toolkit
· 2003 · cited 21,272x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

“Insects were scurrying about in the shade cast by the grass, and the lawn was a huge monotonous forest of thousands of little green blades, all equal, all alike, hiding the world from each other. Anguished, she thought, "I don't want to be just another blade of grass."”
“She was beautiful, with a beauty so severe and so solitary that at first it was startling. "Ah! If only there were two of me," she thought, "one doing the talking and one listening, one living and one watching, how I would love myself. I'd envy no one."”
“Time is beginning to flow again.”
“If I had amnesia, I'd be almost like other men. Perhaps I'd even be able to love you.”
“You made me come to Paris. You pestered me to start living again. Well, now it's up to you to make my life livable. You mustn't let three whole days go by without coming to see me. … You wanted me to take notice of you. Now nothing else matters to me. I know you're alive and I feel emptiness inside me when you're away.”
“I'm never afraid. But in my case it's nothing to be proud of.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

~34 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.

Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, short stories, biographies, autobiographies, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was best known for her "trailblazing work in feminist philosophy", The Second Sex (1949), a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. She was also known for her novels, the most famous of which were She Came to Stay (1943) and The Mandarins (1954).

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Simone de Beauvoir” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.