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Marguerite Yourcenar, 1971. (credit: Gisèle Freund 1971)

(born June 8, 1903, Brussels, Belg. — died Dec. 17, 1987, Northeast Harbor, Maine, U.S.) Belgian-born French-U.S. novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Independently wealthy after her father's death, she led a nomadic life until World War II, when she settled in the U.S. with the American woman who would be her lifelong companion and translator. Her works are noted for their rigorously classical style, their erudition, and their psychological subtlety. Her masterpiece is Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), a historical novel of the 2nd-century Roman Empire. Other works include the novels Coup de grâce (1939) and The Abyss (1968), Oriental Tales (1938), and the prose poem "Fires" (1936). In 1980 she became the first woman in history to be elected to the Académie Française.

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