She Came to Stay
Beauvoir's first published novel, written before and during the war; autobiographical materials become fictional construction.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Existentialism & feminist thought · 1908–1986
Simone de Beauvoir
Freedom is built with others.
Paris · France
Bibliography
Return to the texts.
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
Bibliographic scope
Catalogue of essays, novels, theater, travel writing and memoir volumes, with major posthumous editions and correspondence collections. The two volumes of The Second Sex and multipart memoirs remain grouped under their collective titles. Reissued extracts are not counted as new books. An inventory of every letter and all scattered articles still requires verified edition tables and archival catalogues.
Explore letters and fragmentsPyrrhus and Cineas
Her first published philosophical essay prepares the ethics of ambiguity through questions of action and other people.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)The Blood of Others
Set amid social conflict and the Occupation, published at the Liberation.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Who Shall Die? / The Useless Mouths
Beauvoir's only published play, first staged in 1945, relocates postwar questions of sacrifice and solidarity to a besieged city.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)All Men Are Mortal
The novel makes immortality a philosophical experiment about limits, time and the value of action.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)The Ethics of Ambiguity
This postwar essay develops her own response to responsibility and violence in dialogue with existentialism.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)America Day by Day
The narrative reshapes travel experience and records a visitor's position, including discoveries and limitations.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Existentialism and Popular Wisdom
A collection of interventions from the 1940s, shaped by postwar intellectual controversy.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)The Second Sex
Facts and Myths and Lived Experience appeared in 1949. Translation history matters: some older editions abridge or distort philosophical concepts.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)The Mandarins
Winner of the 1954 Prix Goncourt; biographical resemblance does not make the novel a transparent transcript.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Privileges
It gathers previously published texts; Must We Burn Sade? also circulates extensively on its own.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)The Long March
The essay belongs to the controlled visits and political expectations of its period; its judgments have drawn strong criticism.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
The first memoir volume is written by an author who already knows her later life; that knowledge shapes the narrative.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)The Prime of Life
It retrospectively examines the shift from confidence in individual independence toward a more historical consciousness.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Djamila Boupacha
A work by Gisèle Halimi and Simone de Beauvoir, including testimony and contributions, published during the Algerian War.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Force of Circumstance
Published in two parts, it links reception of books, travel, relationships and political conflicts.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)A Very Easy Death
This brief narrative turns intimate experience into an inquiry about mortality and care.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Les Belles Images
The novel examines 1960s French modernization through advertising, consumption and family relationships.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)The Woman Destroyed
Narrative, monologue and diary offer different access to personal blindness.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)The Coming of Age / Old Age
The extensive inquiry extends The Second Sex's method to a frequently marginalized category.
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This final major memoir volume extends earlier ones without presenting a life as definitively closed.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)When Things of the Spirit Come First
Beauvoir's first fiction collection was rejected before the war and published over forty years after composition.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre
The book combines Beauvoir's testimony with Sartre's conversational voice; the two parts have different documentary status.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Letters to Sartre
Posthumously edited by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir; editorial choices and Sartre's replies remain relevant.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Wartime Diary
A contemporary document published posthumously, distinct from later reconstruction in the memoirs.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)A Transatlantic Love Affair: Letters to Nelson Algren
Written mainly in English, the letters appeared posthumously through an edited publication; the French edition involves translation.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Correspondence with Jacques-Laurent Bost
A posthumous edition of a two-voice correspondence, distinct from Beauvoir's outgoing letters alone.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Diaries of a Philosophy Student / Early Diaries
Posthumously edited by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir; their content predates the first published works.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)Misunderstanding in Moscow
Written in the 1960s, published posthumously in a journal in 1992 and separately in 2013.
Explore this workVisit the source(new tab)The Inseparables
Written in 1954, left unpublished by Beauvoir and issued in 2020; the novel transforms her relationship with Zaza into fiction.
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