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Illustrated portrait of Simone de Beauvoir

Author bibliography

Simone de Beauvoir Books

Last reviewed Simone de Beauvoir’s profile

The short answer

We hold 21 Simone de Beauvoir titles on our shelves: 5 novels, 2 story collections, 1 play, 8 memoirs and travel books, and 5 volumes of nonfiction and letters. They are listed below by form, earliest first, and every one links to its own page.

Start with Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter if you want her life, The Ethics of Ambiguity if you want a short philosophical argument, or The Mandarins if you want a novel. Read The Second Sex when you are ready for a large two-volume study; its introduction and conclusion provide a useful first route through it. The novels stand alone, but the four main memoir volumes should be read in order.

Reviewed against the Bibliothèque nationale de France catalogue, Gallimard's author record, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy bibliography. The shelves cover twenty-one major standalone works first published by Simone de Beauvoir. Posthumous diaries and correspondence are described as further reading rather than counted as part of this core bibliography.

Illustration of Simone de Beauvoir writing at a Left Bank café table beside a typewriter, notebooks, manuscript pages, maps, and stacked books, with a Paris boulevard and tram beyond the windows.

Simone de Beauvoir novels

The Mandarins

Simone de Beauvoir · 1954 · Modernist fiction

A postwar Paris novel about writers deciding whether literature, journalism, love, and political parties can change public life.

4.8

Les Belles Images

Simone de Beauvoir · 1966 · Modernist fiction

A short novel about a successful advertising executive who begins to see the human cost hidden by her polished social world.

4.6
Illustration of Simone de Beauvoir revising fiction at a Paris apartment desk, with a typewriter, manuscript pages, character sketches, and two unidentifiable figures leaving through a doorway.

Simone de Beauvoir short story collections

Plays and screenplays

Work written to be performed. A screenplay published as a book belongs here rather than with the nonfiction, whatever the shelf it was sold on.

Who Shall Die?

Simone de Beauvoir · 1945 · Drama

Beauvoir's only play, about a besieged town deciding that some residents are expendable when food runs short.

4.2

Diaries, memoir, and autofiction

Books written from the author's own life, wherever they were shelved at publication.

America Day by Day

Simone de Beauvoir · 1948 · Memoir & autofiction

A diary of Beauvoir's 1947 journey across the United States, observant about race and class but limited by a visiting European's viewpoint.

4.6

The Long March

Simone de Beauvoir · 1957 · Memoir & autofiction

Beauvoir's account of a 1955 visit to the People's Republic of China, useful as a record of political travel and limited as an assessment of the state she toured.

4.2

The Prime of Life

Simone de Beauvoir · 1960 · Memoir & autofiction

The second memoir volume, covering Beauvoir's life with Jean-Paul Sartre, teaching, travel, first books, and the German occupation of France.

4.6

A Very Easy Death

Simone de Beauvoir · 1964 · Memoir & autofiction

A brief account of Beauvoir's mother's final illness and of a daughter confronting the body, care, memory, and grief.

4.8

All Said and Done

Simone de Beauvoir · 1972 · Memoir & autofiction

A later memoir in which Beauvoir reviews her work, travel, political commitments, friendships, and changing experience of age.

4.2
Illustration of an older Simone de Beauvoir comparing a notebook with a manuscript page at a long table covered with letters, contact sheets, and dated journals, with Paris in changing seasons outside.

Nonfiction, essays, and letters

Criticism, lectures, and journalism published in the author's lifetime, and the volumes editors assembled afterward.

Pyrrhus and Cineas

Simone de Beauvoir · 1944 · Essays & criticism

A short philosophical essay asking why anyone should begin a project when every goal leads to another question: what next?

4.2

The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir · 1949 · Essays & criticism

A two-volume study of how societies make woman the subordinate 'Other' and how that position is lived across a lifetime.

4.8
Illustration of Simone de Beauvoir and three women of different ages studying interview notes, charts, newspapers, and manuscript pages together in a Paris editorial room.

Simone de Beauvoir books in order

Two orders: the one we would hand a new reader, and the order the books were published. Mark what you have read, what you are reading, and what you want to read.

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Common questions

What is the best Simone de Beauvoir book to read first?

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter is the best general starting point because it introduces Simone de Beauvoir's Paris childhood, education, family, friendships, and decision to become a writer. Choose The Ethics of Ambiguity if you want philosophy or The Mandarins if you want a novel.

What order should I read Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs in?

Read Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The Prime of Life, Force of Circumstance, and All Said and Done in that order. A Very Easy Death can be read after the first volume, and Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre belongs at the end.

Which Simone de Beauvoir novel should I start with?

Start with The Mandarins for a large postwar Paris novel or The Woman Destroyed for three shorter works. She Came to Stay is the best next novel because it introduces Beauvoir's conflict between freedom and possession.

Should I read The Second Sex from beginning to end?

You can, but you do not have to begin that way. Read the introduction and conclusion first, then choose chapters by subject. Return to the full two-volume sequence when you know which parts of the historical and philosophical argument you want to follow closely.

How many novels did Simone de Beauvoir write?

Six novels are usually counted: She Came to Stay, The Blood of Others, All Men Are Mortal, The Mandarins, Les Belles Images, and When Things of the Spirit Come First. The Woman Destroyed is a collection of three novellas, and Who Shall Die? is a play.

Did Simone de Beauvoir write only about feminism?

No. Gender is central to The Second Sex and much of her later activism, but her books also address freedom, ethics, political violence, war, colonialism, travel, literature, aging, death, memory, and the practical work of making a life.

Are Simone de Beauvoir's posthumous letters and diaries included here?

No. This page counts twenty-one major standalone works Simone de Beauvoir published or prepared for publication. Posthumous diaries and correspondence are important further reading, but editors and correspondents shaped those volumes, so they are not presented as part of the core author bibliography.

Read more about Simone de Beauvoir: the full biography covers the life, Paris places, and people connected to the work.

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