One of the first 25, 30 and 35 copies on vélin de Hollande.
In 1929, Simone de Beauvoir was twenty years old. She had just passed the agrégation in philosophy, brilliantly placed second — behind Sartre, who was retaking the exam. Fiercely Cartesian, she intended to live in order to write, “free as air,” and entered into a sacred pact with Sartre: “We would never become strangers to one another, neither would ever call on the other in vain, and nothing would prevail against this alliance.” This alliance was accompanied by a further vow: “We will tell each other everything.”
“Even if no life can be set up as a model, the fact remains that by turning her back on millennia-old patriarchal norms, by refusing the destiny imposed on women as wives and mothers, and by becoming one of the most famous philosophers of her time, she showed her readers that they too could try to open the cage of prejudice that held them enclosed. Our children may no longer read either La Nausée or Le Deuxième Sexe, nor any work by her or by him, but their names are now inscribed in the history of mentalities and in that of romantic mythology. This was perhaps not Sartre’s original project. But it is thanks to the Castor, who against all odds built this mythical couple with him, that Sartre will endure in posterity. Beauvoir’s sweet revenge: it is with her that he will win eternity.” (Elisabeth Badinter, Simone de Beauvoir ou les chemins de la liberté, Bnf Conférences, 2002).
A remarkable gathering, on deluxe paper, of this education in women’s freedom for several generations of women.