SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86) lived through some of the most dramatic and harrowing events of the twentieth century, a time of huge change for women across the world, and her life was marked by many opposing tensions: living and writing, the Self andthe Other, the individual and the collective, the person and the myth. Ursula Tidd illuminates these and many other facets of a complex personality: her relentless autobiographical drive, living life as a continuously unfolding narrative; her personal and intellectual relationships, essentially lived as a series of dialogues with a variety of interlocutors, including Jean-Paul Sartre; her active involvement in political struggles.