Sarah Bakewell

Sarah Bakewell (born 1963) is a British author and professor. She lives in London. She received the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Non-Fiction.

Early life Bakewell was born in the seaside town of Bournemouth, England, where her parents ran a small hotel.

Bakewell studied philosophy at the University of Essex in England. Bakewell later completed a post-graduate degree on Artificial Intelligence. The book received rave reviews, with The Guardian calling it a "superb, spirited introduction to the master." Bakewell was drawn to the existentialist movement at a young age; at age 16, she used some of her birthday money to buy a copy of Sartre's Nausea (1938).

Awards and honours 2023 Rosalind Franklin Medal and lectureship from Humanists UK 2018 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in Non-Fiction 2012 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

Works Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Enquiry, and Hope (Chatto & Windus, UK; Penguin, US; Knopf; Canada, March 2023) is about many extraordinary individuals throughout history who have put rational inquiry, cultural richness, freedom of thought and a sense of hope at the heart of their lives. At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails (Other Press, March 2016) is about the existentialist movement and its leaders: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Karl Jaspers and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. London: Chatto & Windus, 2016, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (Chatto & Windus, 2010; Other Press, 2011) is about the life of 16th-century essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. The English Dane (Chatto & Windus, 2005; Vintage, 2006) is about 19th-century Danish adventurer Jørgen Jørgensen, a key player in stirring a revolution in Iceland to break from Denmark's control. The Smart: The True Story of Margaret Caroline Rudd and the Unfortunate Perreau Brothers (Chatto & Windus, 2001; Vintage, 2002) is about an 18th-century forgery trial she came across while working at the Wellcome Library.