Author Guide · Philosophy
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Simone Weil never published a book. When she died in a sanatorium in Ashford, Kent, on 24 August 1943, aged 34, she left notebooks, letters, essays and a long report written in London for the Free French. Before that she had taught philosophy, spent a year on factory floors at Alsthom and Renault, and joined an anarchist column in the Spanish Civil War. Her friends and publishers made the books afterwards: the Catholic farmer Gustave Thibon arranged her notebooks into Gravity and Grace (1947), Albert Camus published The Need for Roots (1949) at Gallimard, and the Dominican Joseph-Marie Perrin brought out her letters to him as Waiting for God (1950). This guide covers her eight key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 8 key books · 1940–1955 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
All of Simone Weil’s books appeared after her death in 1943. The best known are Gravity and Grace (1947), The Need for Roots (1949) and Waiting for God (1950); her essay The Iliad, or the Poem of Force was first printed in 1940. Start with Waiting for God, where her letters explain in her own voice how she came to think as she did.
Where to Start with Simone Weil
If you want her own voice first
→ Waiting for God (1950) — letters and essays, including her spiritual autobiography.
If you want her most famous book
→ Gravity and Grace (1947) — short passages from the notebooks, arranged by theme.
If you want her political philosophy
→ The Need for Roots (1949) — the report she wrote for the Free French in 1943.
If you want one essay before a whole book
→ The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (1940) — violence and war read through Homer.
8 Simone Weil Books, in Order
The Iliad, or the Poem of Force
Written in 1939, it was published in Cahiers du Sud in December 1940 and January 1941 under the anagram “Émile Novis”, to get round antisemitic censorship. Weil reads the Iliad as a poem about force, which turns both the people who suffer it and the people who use it into things. Mary McCarthy’s English translation appeared in the magazine Politics in 1945. It was later collected in La Source grecque (1953).
Gravity and Grace
In 1942, before leaving France, Weil gave her notebooks to Gustave Thibon, a Catholic friend in the Ardèche in whose vineyards she had worked. He chose passages, arranged them into 39 short titled chapters and published them with Plon in 1947, her first book. It made her name, but scholars have pointed out that Thibon’s selection leaves out passages critical of the Church and makes her relationship with Catholicism look simpler than it was.
The Need for Roots
Written in London in early 1943 as a report for the Free French on how France might be rebuilt after the war. Part one lists fourteen “needs of the soul”, from order and liberty to risk and truth, and argues that obligations come before rights; parts two and three deal with uprootedness in cities, the countryside and the nation. Albert Camus published it in his Espoir series at Gallimard in 1949. The 1952 English translation by Arthur Wills had a preface by T. S. Eliot.
Waiting for God
Six letters written in 1942, mostly to the Dominican priest Joseph-Marie Perrin in Marseille, and four essays, among them “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God” and “The Love of God and Affliction”. In the letters she explains why she would not be baptised, and her “Spiritual Autobiography” of May 1942 describes the experiences in Portugal, Assisi and Solesmes that turned her towards Christ. English translation by Emma Craufurd, 1951.
On the Abolition of All Political Parties
A short essay from her London months in 1943, published in the review La Table Ronde in 1950. Weil argues that political parties exist to generate collective passion, exert pressure on their members’ thinking and grow without limit, and that a democracy would be better without them. It is now read in English mainly in the 2013 NYRB Classics translation by Simon Leys.
Letter to a Priest
A long letter written in New York in the autumn of 1942 to the Dominican Marie-Alain Couturier, setting out, point by point, the opinions that she believed kept her outside the Catholic Church: on other religions, on the Hebrew Bible, on baptism and on Church authority. It was published as Lettre à un religieux in 1951.
The Notebooks
The notebooks she kept from 1940 to 1942, published in full by Plon as Cahiers in three volumes between 1951 and 1956; Arthur Wills’s two-volume English translation followed in 1956. This is the raw material from which Gravity and Grace was selected: notes on Greek and Hindu texts, mathematics, labour, affliction and God, in her own order rather than Thibon’s.
Oppression and Liberty
Her political essays of the 1930s, collected by Albert Camus for Gallimard in 1955. The centre is a long essay of 1934 on the causes of liberty and social oppression, written before her year in the factories, alongside her critiques of Marxism and of the organisation of industrial work. English translation by Arthur Wills and John Petrie, 1958.
In What Order to Read Simone Weil
Because Weil wrote none of these books as books, publication order mostly records what her editors found and when. The order in which she wrote them runs differently: the political essays of the 1930s in Oppression and Liberty come first, then the notebooks and letters of 1940–42, and last The Need for Roots and the political-parties essay from London in 1943.
A practical path is to begin with her letters, where she explains herself, then read the aphorisms, then the long political book. Gravity and Grace is easier to judge once you know that Thibon chose and arranged it; the Notebooks show what he left out.
A reading path
1. Waiting for God (1950)
2. The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (1940)
3. Gravity and Grace (1947)
4. The Need for Roots (1949)
5. Oppression and Liberty (1955)
Everything Else Simone Weil Published
Beyond the 8 key books: 10 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other posthumous books (French editions)
9
9 books · 1950–1966
- 1950La Connaissance surnaturelleher notebooks from New York and London, 1942–43
- 1951La Condition ouvrièreher factory journal of 1934–35 and writings on work
- 1951Intuitions pré-chrétiennesessays on Greek thought as a preparation for Christianity
- 1953La Source grecquetranslations from the Greek and essays, including the Iliad essay
- 1955Venise sauvéean unfinished verse tragedy
- 1957Écrits de Londres et dernières lettresessays and letters from London, 1943
- 1960Écrits historiques et politiqueshistorical and political writings
- 1962Pensées sans ordre concernant l’amour de Dieulate religious essays
- 1966Sur la scienceher writings on science and mathematics
Collected edition
1
1 book · 1988
- 1988Œuvres complètesthe scholarly Gallimard edition, published in volumes since 1988
The years · 1909–1947
Quick facts about Simone Weil
- Known for
- Simone Weil is known for her ideas of attention, affliction and rootedness, worked out in notebooks, letters and essays that were published only after her death at 34.
- 1909
- Born in Paris
- 1931
- Agrégation in philosophy
- 1937
- Religious ecstasy in Assisi
- Born
- 3 February 1909, Paris
- Education
- École Normale Supérieure; agrégation in philosophy, 1931
- Family
- Her brother was the mathematician André Weil
- Worked
- Philosophy teacher; factory worker at Alsthom and Renault, 1934–35; Free French in London, 1943
- Spain
- Joined the anarchist Durruti Column in 1936; left after a few weeks with a burn
- Died
- 24 August 1943, Ashford, Kent, aged 34
The red mark is 1947: Gravity and Grace, the first of her books, published four years after her death.
How Simone Weil Writes: Thinking in Fragments
Most of Weil’s work survives as notebooks, letters and reports, not finished books. She wrote in short, dense paragraphs and single sentences that state a thought and move on, which is why an editor could cut her notebooks into the aphorisms of Gravity and Grace. The same habit gives her letters their force: she argues with herself on the page, and in front of the person she is writing to.
A few terms run through everything. Attention is a waiting, emptied state of mind that receives what is in front of it, a “negative effort” in her own phrase, and the basis of her ethics. Affliction (malheur), a word that grew out of her factory year, is suffering that combines physical pain, distress and social degradation. Decreation is the giving up of the self so that the world and other people can appear.
She drew her examples from wherever she had been: Greek tragedy and Homer, the Gospels and the Bhagavad Gita, geometry, the assembly line and the farm. Her prose is plain, without jargon, but her claims are absolute, and readers from T. S. Eliot onwards have admired her while arguing with her judgements. Because others selected and titled most of her books, it helps to know who edited each one.
Frequently asked questions about Simone Weil’s books
How many books has Simone Weil written?
She published no books in her lifetime; everything appeared after her death in 1943. This page lists eight key books and essays, from The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (1940) to Oppression and Liberty (1955), and ten further posthumous French volumes, including the Œuvres complètes that Gallimard has published since 1988.
What are Simone Weil’s books in order?
The Iliad, or the Poem of Force (1940), Gravity and Grace (1947), The Need for Roots (1949), Waiting for God (1950), On the Abolition of All Political Parties (1950), Letter to a Priest (1951), The Notebooks (1951) and Oppression and Liberty (1955). The years are those of first French publication.
Where should I start with Simone Weil?
Waiting for God (1950). Its letters to Father Perrin and its “Spiritual Autobiography” explain her life and thinking in her own words, and the essay on school studies is the clearest account of what she meant by attention.
What is Simone Weil’s most famous book?
Gravity and Grace (1947), the selection from her notebooks made by Gustave Thibon. The Need for Roots (1949), published by Albert Camus with a later English preface by T. S. Eliot, is her major work of political philosophy.
Did Simone Weil write her books herself?
She wrote the texts, but not the books. Gravity and Grace was selected and arranged by Gustave Thibon, Waiting for God was assembled by Father Joseph-Marie Perrin, and Albert Camus published The Need for Roots and collected Oppression and Liberty for Gallimard. Her own titles and order survive best in the Notebooks and the Œuvres complètes.
How did Simone Weil die?
She died of cardiac failure on 24 August 1943 at a sanatorium in Ashford, Kent, aged 34, after tuberculosis and months of eating very little. The coroner recorded that she “did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed.” Her biographer Simone Pétrement disputed this, saying Weil asked for food and was too ill to eat.
Was Simone Weil critical of Judaism?
Yes, and it is the most debated part of her work. Born to a Jewish family, she was harshly critical of the Hebrew Bible and of Judaism’s influence on the West. T. S. Eliot, Susan Sontag and Emmanuel Levinas, in “Simone Weil contre la Bible” (1952), criticised her for it; her niece Sylvie Weil and the scholar Thomas R. Nevin argue she did not simply reject her Jewish origins.
Was Simone Weil a Christian?
She described herself as drawn to Christ after experiences in Portugal in 1935, Assisi in 1937 and Solesmes in 1938, but she refused baptism. In the letters in Waiting for God and in Letter to a Priest she explains why she believed she was meant to stay outside the Church.
What did Simone Weil mean by attention?
For Weil, attention is a kind of waiting: suspending your own thoughts so that you can receive what is in front of you, whether a geometry problem, a text or a suffering person. In “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies” she argues that schoolwork is valuable because it trains this attention, which she saw as the substance of prayer and of love of one’s neighbour.
Footnotes
- Simone Weil — Wikipedia
- Simone Weil — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- The Need for Roots — Wikipedia
- The Famous Book She Never Wrote — Washington Independent Review of Books
- Waiting for God by Simone Weil — EBSCO Research Starters
- Simone Weil — Encyclopædia Universalis, bibliography
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
— Simone Weil, letter to Joë Bousquet (13 April 1942)
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