Letters To Sartre (2026)

These intimate love letters reveal the close, open relationship between Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, two of the twentieth century’s most groundbreaking thinkers who lived out their philosophy. De Beauvoir embodied her feminist philosophy: she never married or had children, had many affairs with both men and women, and actively defied the social norms imposed on women in her time. At the same time, she maintained an intense, long-term relationship with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, whom she referred to as her husband. They met as philosophy students in Paris in 1929 and remained close for more than fifty years, until their deaths in the 1980s. This collection of her love letters to Sartre reveals the details of her everyday life and her passion for the man who shared her ideals. It offers an intimate portrait of a woman living an adventurous and complicated life in the name of individual freedom. De Beauvoir and Sartre are buried together beneath a shared gravestone in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. Despite her career as a writer, philosopher and founder of modern feminism, de Beauvoir described her relationship with Sartre as “the one undoubted success” of her life. Translated and edited by Quintin Hoare.