LITERARY

France’s national literary archive has acquired the rights to 654 letters exchanged between left-wing philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and his longtime lover and companion, novelist Simone de Beauvoir. The two intellectuals met while university students and corresponded regularly during a relationship that ended with Sartre’s death in 1980. The letters were given to the state by De Beauvoir’s heirs in payment of death duties, along with two Sartre manuscripts, three of her own works and “nine intimate notebooks.” The Finance Ministry said the documents were of “very great literary and scientific interest which justifies their becoming part of the national collection.” The letters, 399 from Sartre to the woman he called “Castor” and 255 from her to him, were written between 1926 and 1963. De Beauvoir, known for her best-selling and influential feminist essay, “The Second Sex,” died in 1986. Some of Sartre’s letters had been published, but those from De Beauvoir were “until now unknown to researchers.”