Simone de Beauvoir (1908, Paris) was a writer, theorist, political activist and feminist. She began writing at the age of fourteen, and after graduating from high school she enrolled in mathematics, language and literature and philosophy at the University of Paris, where she met Sartre, her lifelong companion and one of the greatest intellectuals of her time. She taught philosophy for a time in Paris, Marseille and Rouen. She published her first novel, The Guest , in 1943, followed by The Blood of Others , All Men Are Mortal and The Mandarins, which won her the Prix Goncourt in 1954. She also wrote memoirs, essays and philosophical works, the most famous of which is The Second Sex , one of the most widely read feminist works of the last century. She died in 1986.