Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

Simone de Beauvoir was born into a bourgeois Catholic family in Paris in 1908. She was expected to marry well, practise her faith, and take her place in the social order that had been prepared for her. Instead, she became one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, the author of The Second Sex, and the lifelong companion of Jean-Paul Sartre. How did it happen?

The first volume of her autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter answers that question with the same intellectual honesty and emotional precision that characterise all her work. From her earliest memories to her decisive meeting with Sartre at the École Normale Supérieure, de Beauvoir traces the gradual, difficult process of becoming herself — the moment she stopped believing in God, the friendship with Zaza Mabille that was cut tragically short, the dawning realisation that the world as constituted was not made for her.

A beautifully written, essential document of feminist and intellectual history. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.