ABSTRACT
De Beauvoir was the most important influence on modern feminism and a major figure of postwar French existentialism. During her philosophical studies at the Sorbonne (19269) she came in contact with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom she was later to join in founding Les Temps Modernes (1945), the major organ of the non-communist left in France. With Sartre she formed the most enduring and crucial relationship of her life.
