Alfred A. Knopf

Alfred A. Knopf was the American publisher of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and played a decisive role in shaping its first English-language edition. Its request that translator H. M. Parshley condense the book introduced substantial cuts into a work whose author regarded its breadth as important; a later translation restored the omitted material.

Publication and Translation

Blanche Knopf learned of The Second Sex during a scouting trip to Paris. Expecting a highbrow sex manual, she asked H. M. Parshley, a retired professor of zoology at Smith College, to prepare a reader’s report. His assessment of the book as intelligent, learned, and well balanced won him the translation commission.

Condensation and Beauvoir’s Response

Alfred Knopf asked Parshley to shorten the text for the American market, describing Beauvoir as suffering from verbal diarrhea. Parshley then appealed to Beauvoir for guidance on the minor cuts and abridgments the publisher considered necessary. After a period without a reply, he received an indignant letter objecting that so much of what she considered important would be omitted. Despite that protest, Beauvoir graciously approved the edition.

The English Editions and Their Legacy

Parshley’s translation, a labor of love, was demanding work, but he lacked a background in philosophy and French literature. The first English edition appeared in 1953. The next translation, by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, was the first since Parshley’s; it restored the cuts and was presented as a more faithful rendering of Beauvoir’s exhaustive work. The contrast between the editions made the publisher’s early demand for condensation consequential: it shaped the English text available to readers for decades before the omitted material was restored.