Synopses & Reviews
Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987) was born into an aristocratic Flemish family in Brussels. She first started to write in her adolescent years. After the death of her father, she was able to support herself independently by her writing, producing many novels, plays, poems, critical essays, letters, and three volumes of personal memoirs, most of which were written in French and translated into English.Yourcenar moved to America at the outbreak of World War II. In 1951, the publication of Memoires D'Hadrien, translated by her life-long partner, Grace Frick, brought her international acclaim. The book, written in the form of a diary of the Roman emperor Hadrian, is considered by many to be the greatest historical novel of the twentieth century. In 1980, she became the first woman to be elected to the Academie Francaise.George Rousseau explores the complexities of a lesbian who wrote mainly in the voices of gay men, a fiercely controlled intellectual who wrote brilliantly about overwhelming sexual passion.
Synopsis
Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987) was born into an aristocratic Flemish family in Brussels. She first started to write in her adolescent years. After the death of her father, she was able to support herself independently by her writing, producing many novels, plays, poems, critical essays, letters, and three volumes of personal memoirs, most of which were written in French and translated into English.
About the Author
George Rousseau was a member of the English Faculty at Harvard University between 1966 to 1968, before moving to a professorship at UCLA, and later to the Regius Chair of English at Aberdeen University, Scotland. Since then he has been attached to the History Faculty at Oxford University in Oxford, England, where was the Co-Director of the Centre for the History of Childhood from 2003 - 2013. Between 2010 - 2012 Rousseau was the presenter of the Wellcome Collection Series in London called Tell It To Your Doctor.