Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Simone de Beauvoir
-
Standard Name: Beauvoir, Simone de
Birth Name: Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
Nickname: Castor
Frenchwoman SB
has high standing as a philosopher of the twentieth-century existentialist school and is respected as a commentator on political and social issues (in effect, a contemporary historian), a novelist, and an autobiographer. She also published and had produced a play. But her outstanding (though lastingly controversial) achievement is her book on women, entitled in English The Second Sex, a foundational text for modern feminism.
Her first love-affair, technically unconsummated, began in January 1959 with a boy a little older than herself, and lasted three years. He gave her a copy of Simone de Beauvoir
's The Second Sex...
Fictionalization
Lady Eleanor Butler
Among many less formal honours during the ladies' lifetimes, the most extraordinary was LEB
's award of a French, ancien régime, military medal: the Croix St Louis. It is shown in a famous portrait of...
Friends, Associates
Iris Murdoch
IM
received a fan letter from Eudora Welty
in 1956. She wrote to Simone de Beauvoir
, hoping to arrange a meeting, but de Beauvoir sais she would not be in Paris at the date...
Health
Adrienne Rich
After her third delivery she decided to be sterilised, though she met with social disapproval even from nurses caring for her in hospital: Had yourself spayed, did you?
qtd. in
O’Mahoney, John. “Poet and Pioneer: Adrienne Rich”. The Guardian, 15 June 2002, pp. Review 20 - 3.
22
She later recalled her isolation during...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anita Brookner
AB
relishes all this. But she writes with tactful sympathy of Germaine de Staël
and her younger, mostly unreciprocating lovers, and of Judith Gautier
(daughter of Théophile
), who deserves to be remembered not only...
Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Drabble
The protagonist of this book, ageing Francesca Stubbs, is employed as an inspector of retirement homes. She and the other characters here, witnessing the ends' of friends' lives and approaching their own, make sense of...
Intertextuality and Influence
Deborah Levy
This book has four sections, each titled from a reason for writing, Political Purpose, Historical Impulse, Sheer Egoism, and Aesthetic Enthusiasm. The first and last describe a period of near-breakdown that...
Intertextuality and Influence
Zoë Fairbairns
In the course of the novel all three daughters and their mother make some contact with the women's liberation movement. For Christine this happens when she finds a hidden copy of Simone de Beauvoir
's...
Intertextuality and Influence
Iris Murdoch
Her omnivorous reading during the last year of her degree included the major modern novelists, notably including Proust
and Woolf
(the darling dangerous woman who made her feel quite incapable of writing anything straight...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ann Oakley
AO
's own contribution to this collection, A Brief History of Gender, invokes Simone de Beauvoir
at its outset. Its thesis is that gender is indispensable to analysis of the way men and women...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ann Oakley
AO
uses epigraphs from Simone de Beauvoir
's The Second Sex for the book as a whole and for each chapter. The title of each chapter until the last (In the Year 2000)...
Intertextuality and Influence
Adrienne Rich
The title poem had been jotted in fragments during children's naps, brief hours in a library or at three am after rising with a wakeful child.
qtd. in
O’Mahoney, John. “Poet and Pioneer: Adrienne Rich”. The Guardian, 15 June 2002, pp. Review 20 - 3.
22
The collection followed on intensive reading of such...
Leisure and Society
Amabel Williams-Ellis
AWE
made her formal entry into society as a debutante, a change of status . . . important then for the young females of our sub-tribe.
Williams-Ellis, Amabel. All Stracheys Are Cousins. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983.
The book is a landmark text. In an introduction to an edition of 1968, Doris Lessing
(who first read it when she was fourteen) identified it as one of the few rare books ....
names
Alison Fell
BirthName: Alison Fell
She is not the Alison S. Fell, feminist scholar of French literature, who in 2003 published Liberty, Equality, Maternity in Beauvoir
, Leduc
and Ernaux, and in 2007 edited, jointly with...
Timeline
1673: François Poulain (or Poullain) de la Barre...
Writing climate item
1673
François Poulain (or Poullain) de la Barre
published at Paris his Cartesian treatise on gender equality, De l'égalité des deux sexes, which was translated into English four years later.
The Origins of Modern Feminism, 1567-1876. Quaritch, 1998.
Buchanan, Dave. Augustan Women’s Verse Satire. University of Alberta, 1998.
61
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Bosley, Vivien. “A Pre-Wave Ripple: The Sound of Other Voices”. Not Drowning but Waving: Women, Feminism, and the Liberal Arts, 14 Oct. 2006.
1 January 1916: The British edition of Vogue (an American...
Building item
1 January 1916
The British edition of Vogue (an American fashion magazine) began publishing from Condé Nast
in Hanover Square, London.
White, Cynthia L. Women’s Magazines 1693-1968. Michael Joseph, 1970.
90
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Spawls, Alice. “Does one flare or cling?”. London Review of Books, Vol.
38
, No. 9, 5 May 2016, pp. 40-2.
1925: The Black US singer Josephine Baker, aged...
Building item
1925
The Black US singer Josephine Baker
, aged nineteen, met with phenomenal success in Paris; she was seen as exemplifying the Jazz Age on one hand and a new racial consciousness on the other.
Nkosi, Lewis. “An UnAmerican in New York”. London Review of Books, 24 Aug. 2000, pp. 30-2.
30
Rogin, Michael. “Mon Pays”. London Review of Books, 22 Mar. 2001, pp. 21-3.
21-2
By July 1955: Françoise Sagan, aged eighteen, repeated...
Writing climate item
By July 1955
Françoise Sagan
, aged eighteen, repeated in England the previous year's sensational success in France of her novel Bonjour Tristesse: the English version was by Irene Ash
.
British Book News. British Council.
(1955): 1138
Corbett, Anne. “Françoise Sagan”. The Guardian, 27 Sept. 2004, p. 23.
23
Chrisafis, Angelique. “Bonjour Françoise: France in thrall to Sagan”. The Guardian, 31 May 2008, p. 25.
25
28 November 1956: The film Et Dieu . . . créa la femme (And...
Building item
28 November 1956
The film Et Dieu . . . créa la femme (And Woman . . . Was Created in the UK and And God Created Woman in the USA) had its French premiere. It starred...
By late 1963: The best-known novel by US author Mary McCarthy,...
Writing climate item
By late 1963
The best-known novel by US author Mary McCarthy
, The Group, appeared in Britain. It traces the later lives of a number of graduates of Vassar
, then an all-women's college.
January 2010: The Simone de Beauvoir prize for women's...
Building item
January 2010
The Simone de Beauvoir
prize for women's liberty was awarded jointly to two Chinese women, Guo Jianmei
, a lawyer, and Ai Xiaoming
, a film-maker and professor of comparative literature.
Kristeva, Julia. “Women’s rights falter in China”. Guardian Weekly, 24 June 2011, p. 24.
24
Texts
Beauvoir, Simone de. All Said and Done. Translator O’Brian, Patrick, André Deutsch; Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974.
Beauvoir, Simone de. Le deuxième sexe. Gallimard, 1949, 2 vols.
Beauvoir, Simone de. Le sang des autres. Gallimard, 1945.
Beauvoir, Simone de. Les mandarins. Gallimard, 1954.
Beauvoir, Simone de. Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée. Gallimard, 1958.
Beauvoir, Simone de. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. Translator Kirkup, James, Penguin, 2001.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translator Parshley, H. M., Jonathan Cape, 1953.
Beauvoir, Simone de. Tout compte fait. Gallimard, 1972.
Beauvoir, Simone de. “Translator’s Preface”. The Second Sex, translated by. H. M. Parshley, Jonathan Cape, 1953, pp. 7-11.
