- Born
- 8 June 1903Brussels, Belgium
- Died
- 17 December 1987Bar Harbor, Maine, USA · aged 84
Marguerite Yourcenar
The author of “Memoirs of Hadrian” was the first woman elected to the Académie française – and lived for forty years with Grace Frick.
Marguerite Yourcenar was born in Brussels; her mother died days after her birth. Her father, a cultivated aristocrat, raised her, travelled with her across Europe and taught her Latin and Greek. She never went to school. Her pen name is an anagram of her family name, Crayencour.
In 1937 she met the American scholar Grace Frick in Paris. When the Second World War broke out, Yourcenar followed her to the United States. The two lived together for forty years, from 1950 in a house on Mount Desert Island in Maine. Frick translated her books into English and took care of all practical matters.
Her great novel “Memoirs of Hadrian” (1951) is written as a letter from the dying Roman emperor, in which he also reflects on his love for the young Antinous. It became a classic of world literature. “The Abyss” (1968), about a Renaissance physician and alchemist, was another major success.
In 1980 Yourcenar became the first woman ever elected to the Académie française. After Frick’s death in 1979 she travelled the world with a young American friend, Jerry Wilson. She died in Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1987, aged 84.