Hazel E. Barnes

With a New Preface

Existentialist Ethics

She came of age in the era between Virginia Woolf and Betty Friedan, when women were beginning to break away from traditional patterns but primarily as exceptions and only within limits. Barnes recounts how she came to undertake the translation of Sartre and the subsequent battles with publishers and some hostile critics.

A Venture in Existentialist Autobiography

The Story I Tell Myself

The Story I Tell Myself is an engrossing account of one woman's psychological liberation from a false sense of what she wanted to be, and of the gradual development of a personal philosophy she was willing to live by. Before she finished college, Barnes had shed her religious beliefs, but she kept intact her inbred convictions that life was difficult, that she was accountable for what she made of her life, and that her actions should accord with her own values. She came of age in the era between Virginia Woolf and Betty Friedan, when women were beginning to break away from traditional patterns but primarily as exceptions and only within limits. Barnes recounts how she came to undertake the translation of Sartre and the subsequent battles with publishers and some hostile critics. Taking to heart Sartre's belief that an individual is both the product and the unique expression of his or her period, Barnes describes how she made Existentialism her own - introducing it in writing, in speaking, and in a television series.

Best known as the writer who introduced French existentialism to English-speaking readers through her translation of Sartre's Being and Nothingness, Hazel E. Barnes has written an autobiography that is both the success story of a professional woman as well as a profoundly moving reflection on growing older. Transcending the personal details of her life, Barnes' memoir stands as an important contribution to the intellectual history of our century. "An intimate record of our times and of the ongoing issues that challenge us to define ourselves over and over again."—Kirkus Reviews "An engaging autobiography that spans not only [Barnes'] self-identified period of 'flourishing' but virtually all the twentieth century."—Library Journal "Thoughtful, gracefully written reflections. . . . Readers will be glad they pursued an unusual woman's intellectual and personal journey."—Booklist "An accessible, wonderfully written book packed with wisdom and insight."—Denver Post "Absorbing and satisfying."—Gertrude Reif Hughes, Women's Review of Books

Hazel E. Barnes

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