When 'Memoires d'Hadrien' was first published in 1951, it was an immediate success and quickly translated into English by the lovers. In 1939 she was invited to America by her lover Grace Frick, where she lectured in comparative literature at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Marguerite de Crayencour (1903-88), who went by the inexact anagrammatic pen name 'Marguerite Yourcenar', was a Belgian born French novelist and essayist, the first woman to be elected to the Academie Française. The Emperor meditates on his past, describing his accession, military triumphs, love of poetry and music, and the philosophy that informed his powerful and far flung rule. The Emperor Hadrian, aware his demise is imminent, writes a long valedictory letter to Marcus Aurelius, his future successor. Framed as a letter from the Roman Emperor Hadrian to his successor, Marcus Aurelius, Marguerite Yourcenar recreates the life and death of one of the great rulers of the ancient world. Not price clipped (12s 6d), previous owner's name to half title page (academic and literary critic Raisley Moorsom 1892-1981), internally clean tight and almost square, overall a vg copy for its age. Memoirs of Hadrian is a novel by the Belgian-born French writer Marguerite Yourcenar about the life and death of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Jacket slightly tatty, with edge wear, chipping, short closed tears and loss to top and bottom of jacket and spine, corners rubbed with loss, spine slightly faded, small scratch to front jacket, some overall time and dust staining.
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