Yourcenar

By George Rousseau

NOW OUT OF PRINT

Marguerite Yourcenar's 'Memoirs of Hadrian' has sold almost a million copies since its publication in 1951 - an outstanding figure for an intellectually demanding historical novel. Yourcenar was the first woman to be elected to the prestigious French Academy, limited to 40 'Immortals' (the word used of those elected). Yet her sin was that she wanted to be Hadrian - to be a great man - and pretended to do so.

George Rousseau is a member of the Faculty of Modern History at the University of Oxford. He has written many books and articles about the influence of cultural history on individual life, most recently Gout: The Patrician Malady with the late Roy Porter.