Beauvoir, Simone de

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Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–86) French novelist, essayist, and critic. Her novels She Came to Stay (1943) and The Mandarins (1954) are portraits of the existentialist intellectual circle of which she and her lifelong companion, Jean-Paul Sartre, were members. Her best-known work is the feminist treatise The Second Sex (1949). Other significant works include The Prime of Life (1960), A Very Easy Death (1964), and Old Age (1970). See also existentialism

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