Jean-Paul Sartre

Andrew Leak (University College London)
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Jean-Paul Sartre was born on 21 June 1905 in Paris. His father, Jean-Baptiste, was a naval officer, and his mother, Anne-Marie Schweitzer, was of the professional middle-classes and a first cousin of the world-famous missionary Albert Schweitzer. The death of his father when “Poulou” (as he was known in his family) was still a baby was later described by Sartre as the most significant event of his life; it obliged his mother to take her child back to live with her parents in Meudon and, later, Paris. Sartre’s sheltered childhood – he was largely educated at home by his mother and grandfather – came to a jolting end with the remarriage of his mother in 1917 to an engineer named Joseph Mancy. The threesome moved to provincial L…

2925 words

Citation: Leak, Andrew. "Jean-Paul Sartre". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 October 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3940, accessed 28 March 2024.]

3940 Jean-Paul Sartre 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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