Simone De Beauvoir (Critical Lives) - Softcover

'Tidd does an excellent job of linking the life to the work ... This is an accessible study that doesn't reduce of simplify De Beauvoir's work in any way, while simultaneously attempting to understand her way of living.' - Independent on Sunday 'The task of presenting a major thinker and prolific writer in such a short space cannot have been easy, but Tidd has done it very well. She has synthesized a lot of information and presented it in a clear narrative ... she expertly weaves together Beauvoir's life and the major historical events of the twentieth century and shows what impact these have had on her thinking and writing ... Tidd obviously respects Beauvoir, and this is reflected in the tactful handling of some of the more controversial aspects of her life. This is an excellent introduction to Beauvoir's work, life, and myth.' - Modern language Review 'Ursula Tidd distils some of her earlier groundbreaking analysis on Beauvoir's understanding of self and other, and resituates it in a more general appraisal of the author's life and works ... particularly helpful for students, or indeed anyone looking for a way into Beauvoir's oeuvre ... a wide-ranging and informative study.' - French Studies 'Tidd's brief survey of Beauvoir's life ends with a poignant commentary: "She sought to inscribe a path of freedom from which those who came after her could derive their own." Tidd offers her readers a roadmap to that path which is well worth following.' - Metapsychology

This new biography of Simone de Beauvoir (1908-86) is a concise, up-to-date, critical appraisal of the life and works of the quintessential feminist intellectual, best known for her pioneering work "Le Deuxieme Sexe" (1949). Drawing on the most recent scholarship on Beauvoir's work, and newly-published and extant volumes of her diaries and correspondence, Ursula Tidd allows the reader unrivalled access to the voice of this pivotal modern figure. Beauvoir lived and worked 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 opposed tensions: living and writing, the Self and the Other, the individual and the collective, and the person and the myth.In this volume 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, which were essentially lived as a series of dialogues with a variety of interlocutors, including Jean-Paul Sartre; her active involvement in political struggles; and how Beauvoir the woman become Beauvoir the myth. "Simone de Beauvoir" will benefit undergraduates and the educated reader interested in a short critical appraisal of Beauvoir's life and works. The book will find a wide audience due to the current high level of interest in Beauvoir's work in Europe, North America and Asia, fuelled by the centenary, in 2008, of her birth.