Simone de Beauvoir letters to friend in ‘complex’ relationship sold at auction for £50,000

French author Simon de Beauvoir, 68, in her Parisian apartment

Almost 300 mostly unpublished letters from feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir to the French novelist Violette Leduc, including The Second Sex author’s rejection of her friend’s romantic advances, have sold for €56,700 (£51,500).

Auction house Sotheby’s described the “remarkable” letters, which sold earlier this month, as a testament to “a complex and ambiguous relationship … where unrequited amorous passion, tenderness and mutual admiration tinged with mistrust mingle”.

The 297 missives, sent between 1945 to a month before Leduc’s death in 1972, reveal the deep friendship between the pair and Beauvoir’s unstinting support for her chronically insecure fellow writer, who she once called “the most interesting woman I know”.

Beauvoir, who edited her friend’s work, sought inspiration from her for her analysis of lesbianism in The Second Sex.

According to Le Monde, Leduc once told a student friend: "Simone de Beauvoir is a pure intellectual and I am pure sensitivity."

Although she had famous literary admirers, including Jean Genet and Albert Camus, Leduc failed to achieve fame until the end of her life with her depiction of lesbian sex deemed beyond the pale by many.

In the letters, Beauvoir diplomatically spurns Leduc’s advances, writing: “It is strange to find out that you are so precious to someone: you know that you are never precious to yourself; there is a mirage effect there which will certainly dissipate quickly.”

Leduc later wrote: “She has explained that the feeling I have for her is a mirage. I don’t agree.”

Despite this disagreement, the pair remained close for decades and Beauvoir was relentlessly encouraging.

“You are writing a beautiful, courageous book, in which I believe,” she wrote of Leduc’s then-forthcoming book Ravages.

However, Ravages proved too graphic to avoid censorship from male staff at publishers Gallimard who described an early lesbian sex scene as “enormously and specifically obscene”.

In a letter from 1954, Beauvoir wrote: “I am indignant at their prudery, their lack of courage. Sartre too. Do not be broken. You must defend yourself and we will help you. There are other publishers than Gallimard.”

An uncensored edition of Ravages was finally published in France in 2000, and translated into English in 2012 as Thérèse and Isabelle.

Leduc finally gained critical acclaim for her memoir La Bâtarde in 1964.