De Beauvoir, Simone. LE DEUXIEME SEXE. Les Faits et Les Mythes I - L'experience Vecue. II. Signed. Paris: Gallimard, 1949. First Edition, two volumes in wrappers, Limited to 2,000 Numbered Copies (of a total edition of 2,150) of this founding text of feminism inspiring later works by Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique & Kate Millett, Sexual Politics. 8vo. 395 pp. + 577 pp. + Tables of contents at the end of each volume. Both Volumes Signed & Inscribed by Simone de Beauvoir in French to Bernie Wolfe, personal assistant & bodyguard to Leon Trotsky during his exile in Mexico. Wolfe became quite famous in his own right, associating with many of the political extremists of his day & was close friends with Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo. Volume 1 inscribed: "For Bernie Wolfe / who has done something or other & made me his great friend / With all my love / S. de Beauvoir". Volume 2 inscribed: "For Bernie Wolfe / with my constant friendship we are friends "en poche" / S. de Beauvoir". Housed in a fine custom clamshell case. A very good or better set showing modest use. The genesis of Modern Feminism. NYPL Books Of The Century, pp. 129. New York Times Books Of The Century. pp. 189-190. An extraordinary Presentation set. Rarely encountered. $35000

In 1947 the French writer Philippe Soupault organized for the 39 year old Simone de Beauvoir a series of conferences at various American Universities. In France the Cold War divided French intellectuals. The relations between Sartre & Camus have become strained. Jan 24th 1947, Beauvoir travels to New York from where she writes to Sartre: " If I want to reflect about New York, I must talk to New Yorkers. There are names in my notebook but they don't bring any faces to mind. It will be necessary to speak on the telephone in English with people who are unaware of me and whom I don’t know ". The writer Richard Wright introduced her to his circle of friends including Bernard Wolfe, author of several mostly for television plays & novels including his best known 1952 science-fiction novel Limbo [Pringle 100 Best] & with whom she becomes good friends. In February [1947] Beauvoir heads for her Chicago lecture tour where she contacts Nelson Algren through her new New Yorker friends. Algren lived in the lower class Polish district of Chicago; the Bowery with its share of striptease clubs & mob bars. Communicating isn't easy as Beauvoir spoke English with a strong French accent & Algren spoke Midwest. But they managed - their affair rather historical.   It was to Algren that de Beauvoir broached the idea of writing on women, and he encouraged her to expand her essays into a book.  Chapters of Le Deuxième Sexe (The Second Sex) were originally published in Les Temps Modernes, in June 1949. Blanche Knopf, wife of de Beauvoir’s American publisher, heard about the book on a scouting trip to France and believed it to be a highbrow sex manual. Knopf asked for a reader’s report from retired zoologist, Howard M. Parshley, who was then commissioned to do the translation despite his undergraduate French. Thus the trade edition that followed was mistranslated and inappropriately cut, distorting her intended message. For years Knopf prevented the introduction of a more accurate translation of de Beauvoir's work, declining all proposals despite the efforts of existentialist scholars. When in 2009 there was a second translation, to mark the 60th anniversary of the original publication, Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier produced the first integral translation, reinstating a third of the original work in which de Beauvoir anticipated the sexually charged feminism of Erica Jong & Germaine Greer. Algren was outraged by the frank way de Beauvoir later described their affair in, The Mandarins, (dedicated to Algren, and  winner of the Prix Goncourt) on whom the character Lewis Brogan is based & in her autobiographies. He vented his outrage when reviewing American translations of her work including, The Second Sex. Material on these episodes in de Beauvoir's life, including her love letters to Algren, entered the public domain only after her death. In the chapter 'Woman: Myth and Reality' of The Second Sex, de Beauvoir argues that men have made women the "Other" in society by putting a false aura of "mystery" around them and that men used this as an excuse not to understand women or their problems & not to help them, & that this stereotyping was always done in societies by the group higher in the hierarchy to the group lower in the hierarchy. 


Chapters of Le deuxième sexe (The Second Sex) were originally published in Les Temps Modernes, in June 1949. The trade edition that followed was very quickly translation by Howard Parshley [as prompted by Blanche Knopf] & published in America as The Second Sex. Because Parshley had only a basic familiarity with the French language, & a minimal understanding of philosophy [he was a professor of biology at Smith College], much of Beauvoir's book was mistranslated or inappropriately cut, distorting her intended message. For years Knopf prevented the introduction of a more accurate retranslation of Beauvoir's work, declining all proposals despite the efforts of existentialist scholars. Only in 2009 was there a second translation, to mark the 60th anniversary of the original publication. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier produced the first integral translation, reinstating a third of the original work. In the long-awaited second translation of The Second Sex, Beauvoir anticipated the sexually charged feminism of Erica Jong & Germaine Greer. Algren was outraged by the frank way Beauvoir later described her American sexual experiences in The Mandarins (dedicated to Algren, on whom the character Lewis Brogan was based) & in her autobiographies. He vented his outrage when reviewing American translations of her work including The Second Sex. Much material bearing on this episode in Beauvoir's life, including her love letters to Algren, entered the public domain only after her death.
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