page_title: Simone de Beauvoir
section_title: The Mandarins
hierarchical_section_title: Simone de Beauvoir / Notable works / The Mandarins
caption_attribution_description: English: House where Nelson Algren summered in Miller Beach, sometimes accompanied by Simone de Beauvoir, on Forest Avenue just south of the Miller lagoon.
context_page_description: Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand Beauvoir was a French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.
  Beauvoir wrote novels, essays, biographies, autobiography and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues. She was known for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism; and for her novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins. She was also known for her open, lifelong relationship with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
context_section_description: Published in 1954, The Mandarins won her France's highest literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. The book is set after the end of World War II and follows the personal lives of philosophers and friends among Sartre's and Beauvoir's intimate circle, including her relationship with American writer Nelson Algren, to whom the book was dedicated. Algren was outraged by the frank way Beauvoir described their sexual experiences in both The Mandarins and her autobiographies. Algren vented his outrage when reviewing American translations of Beauvoir's work. Much material bearing on this episode in Beauvoir's life, including her love letters to Algren, entered the public domain only after her death.
caption: Dunes cottage where Algren and Beauvoir summered in Miller Beach, Indiana
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