Jean-Paul Sartre

Andrew Leak (University College London)
Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

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 La Rochelle where Mancy took up the directorship of a…

2925 words

Citation: Leak, Andrew. "Jean-Paul Sartre". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 October 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3940, accessed 19 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.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.