Jonathan Cape

Jonathan Cape is the British publisher associated with the 2009 hardcover edition of the new English translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Its role links the book’s French publication history to a collaborative retranslation project shaped by sustained editorial work and specialist consultation.

Publication and editions

The Second Sex was originally published in France in 1949 by Éditions Gallimard, in two volumes titled Le deuxième sexe: Les faits et les mythes and L’expérience vécue. The English translation by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier appeared in hardcover in Great Britain in 2009, published by Jonathan Cape, part of the Random House Group. A slightly different form was subsequently published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf in 2010.

Role in the retranslation

Jonathan Cape editor Ellah Allfrey took on the substantial project after Anne-Solange Noble of Éditions Gallimard had spent years advocating for it. Allfrey worked step by step with the translators over three years, with support from LuAnn Walther of Knopf. The account of the project emphasizes the editorial collaboration behind the English text rather than presenting the translation as the work of translators alone.

Editorial and scholarly context

The translation was supported by consultations with specialists in areas Beauvoir had explored, including psychoanalysis, biology, anthropology, and philosophy. The translators also acknowledge assistance on specific literary and historical passages, among them research on the French Middle Ages and a new translation of extracts from Paul Claudel. Jonathan Cape’s participation therefore belongs to a broader process of editorial coordination and scholarly review that helped produce the English edition.