born Jan. 9, 1908, Paris, France
died April 14, 1986, Paris
French writer and feminist.
As a student at the Sorbonne, she met Jean-Paul Sartre , with whom she formed a lifelong intellectual and romantic bond. She is known primarily for her treatise The Second Sex (1949), a scholarly and passionate plea for the abolition of what she called the myth of the "eternal feminine"; the book became a classic of feminist literature. She also wrote four admired volumes of autobiography (195872), philosophical works that explore themes of existentialism , and fiction, notably The Mandarins (1954, Prix Goncourt). The Coming of Age (1970) is a bitter reflection on society's indifference to the elderly.