Marguerite Yourcenar





Marguerite Yourcenar

Author profile


born
June 08, 1903 in Brussels, Belgium

died
December 17, 1987

gender
female

genre


About this author

Yourcenar was born Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour in Brussels, Belgium to Michel Cleenewerck de Crayencour, of French aristocratic descent, and a Belgian mother who died ten days after her birth. She grew up in the home of her paternal grandmother.

Yourcenar's first novel, Alexis, was published in 1929. Her intimate companion at the time, a translator named Grace Frick, invited her to the United States, where she lectured in comparative literature in New York City and Sarah Lawrence College. Yourcenar was bisexual and she and Frick became lovers in 1937, and would remain so until Frick's death in 1979.

In 1951 she published, in France, the French-language novel Mémoires d'Hadrien, which she had been wri...more


Average rating: 4.09 · 4,519 ratings · 395 reviews · 62 distinct works
Memoirs of Hadrian
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4.19 of 5 stars 4.19 avg rating — 2,305 ratings — published 1951 — 62 editions
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L'Œuvre au Noir
4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 avg rating — 580 ratings — published 1968 — 21 editions
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Oriental Tales
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3.92 of 5 stars 3.92 avg rating — 394 ratings — published 1938 — 22 editions
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Coup de Grace
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3.77 of 5 stars 3.77 avg rating — 192 ratings — published 1939 — 18 editions
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Alexis Ou le Traite Du Vain...
3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 avg rating — 103 ratings — published 1929 — 3 editions
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Fires
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4.19 of 5 stars 4.19 avg rating — 119 ratings — published 1974 — 15 editions
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A Coin in Nine Hands: A Novel
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3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 avg rating — 87 ratings — published 1934 — 10 editions
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Alexis o el tratado del inú...
3.94 of 5 stars 3.94 avg rating — 132 ratings — published 1929 — 17 editions
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Anna, Soror..
3.92 of 5 stars 3.92 avg rating — 65 ratings2 editions
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Mishima: A Vision of the Void
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3.77 of 5 stars 3.77 avg rating — 81 ratings — published 1982 — 14 editions
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More books by Marguerite Yourcenar…
“Of all our games, love's play is the only one which threatens to unsettle the soul...”
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

“Passion such as hers is all consent, asking little in return. I had merely to enter a room where she was to see her face take on that peaceful expression of one who is resting in bed. If I touched her, I had the impression that all the blood in her veins was turning to honey.”
Marguerite Yourcenar

“The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.”
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

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