Marguerite Yourcenar Books In Order

Novels

Alexis (1929)
A Coin in Nine Hands (1934)
Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)
Coup de Grace (1957)
The Abyss (1968)
Fires (1981)
That Mighty Sculptor, Time (1984)
Two Lives and a Dream (1987)
Zeno of Bruges (1994)
Dreams and Destinies (1999)
Eternity Regained (2003)

Collections

Oriental Tales (1938)
A Blue Tale (1995)

Non fiction

Dear Departed (1974)
Mishima (1980)
The Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays (1984)
With Open Eyes (1984)
How Many Years (1995)

Novels Book Covers

Collections Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Marguerite Yourcenar Books Overview

Alexis

It was with Alexis that, in 1928, Marguerite Yourcenar began her career as a novelist. The book remains one of the stellar literary debuts of the century. Yourcenar has created a moving meditation on the relationship between pleasure and love.

A Coin in Nine Hands

During the space of a day in Rome in 1933, a ten lira coin pas*ses through the hands of nine people including an aging artist, a prostitute, and a would be assassin of Mussolini. The coin becomes the symbol of contact between human beings, each lost in private passions and nearly impenetrable solitude.’A Coin in Nine Hands has…
passages that move close to poetry and a story that belongs in both literature and history.’ Doris Grumbach, Los Angeles Times Book Review’What lingers at the end of A Coin in Nine Hands is the shadowiness and puppetlike vagueness of the Dictator, and the compelling specificity of the so called ‘common people’ revolving all around him.’ Anne Tyler, The New Republic ‘Within a few pages we have met half the major characters in this haunting, brilliantly constructed novel…
. The studied perfection, the structural intricacy and brevity remind one of Camus. Yet by comparison, Yourcenar’s prose is lavish, emotional and imagistic.’ Cynthia King, Houston Post’Transcends its specific time and place to become a portrait of vividly delineated characters caught in the vise of a tragically familiar political situation.’ Publisher’s WeeklyBest known as the author of Memoirs of Hadrian and The Abyss, Marguerite Yourcenar 1903 87 achieved countless literary honors and was the first woman ever elected to the Acad mie Fran aise.

Memoirs of Hadrian

Written in the form of a testamentary letter from the Emperor Hadrian to his successor, the youthful Marcus Aurelius, this work is as extraordinary for its psychological depth as for its accurate reconstruction of the second century of our era. The author describes the book as a meditation upon history, but this meditation is built upon intensive study of the personal and political life of a great and complex character as seen by himself and his contemporaries, both friends and enemies. Marguerite Yourcenar reconstructs Hadrian’s arduous early years, his triumphs and reversals, and his gradual reordering of a war torn world.

Coup de Grace

Set in the Baltic provinces in the aftermath of World War I, Coup de Grace tells the story of an intimacy that grows between three young people hemmed in by civil war: Erick, a Prussian fighting with the White Russians against the Bolsheviks; Conrad, his best friend from childhood; and Sophie, whose unrequited love for Conrad becomes an unbearable burden.

The Abyss

Marguerite Yourcenar instantly assumes command of our imagination in her novel The Abyss. Almost before we know it the author establishes a scene and time, and engages us in the fate of two cousins.

Fires

Fires consists of nine monologues and narratives based on classical Greek stories. Antigone, Clytemnestra, Phaedo, Sappho are all mythical figures whose stories are mingled with contemporary themes. Interspersed are highly personal narratives, reflecting on a time of profound inner crisis in the author’s life. ‘The unwritten novel among the fantasies and aphorisms of Fires is a classic tale.’ Stephen Koch, New York Times Book Review

That Mighty Sculptor, Time

This posthumously published collection of essays takes up such diverse subjects as the poet Oppian, Tantrism, the feasts of the Christian year, Durer, the Japanese studies of Ivan Morris, the erotic mysticism of the Gita Govinda, the eternal spirit of Andalusia, and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. The title esay consider’s time’s transforming effect on arrt, meditating on the erosion of a statue and the resulting production of a new, sublime work of art.

Two Lives and a Dream

Set in Rembrandt’s Amsterdam, ‘An Obscure Man’ is the story of Nathana l innocent, open to experience born like Everyman upon the stream of life. In ‘A Lovely Morning,’ Nathana l’s young son joins a touring company of Jacobean actors. ‘Anna, soror…
,’ the final tale, is an account of illicit passion in the baroque world of Naples.’An Obscure Man swarms with life. This intricately researched, imaginative, beautifully written tale of a young man’s brief life in the mid 17th century is entirely engrossing.’ Leona Weiss, San Francisco Chronicle’In these three stories, Yourcenar succeeds in making the essences of these past lives a part of the reader’s future through the sheer intensity of their portrayal.’ Margaret Ezell, Houston Chronicle

Dreams and Destinies

Dreams and Destinies, the Rosetta stone of Marguerite Yourcenar’s canon, is an intimate journal of her dreams. In this book, Yourcenar writes in a daring yet unconventional autobiographical form that allows the reader to view her life as it is refracted through the poetic sensibility of her own sleeping mind. Men, women, children, animals, and mythical creatures populate her dreams as Yourcenar wanders through a picture gallery of the soul, pausing before ruined cathedrals filled with candles, dark ravines that hold dead bodies, and still reflecting pools located deep inside soaring gothic churches. Revised to include changes that she requested before her death, and now available for the first time in English, Dreams and Destinies is a reminder from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century that the dreams we create are with us forever.

Oriental Tales

‘From China to Japan, the Balkans to India, Oriental Tales addresses love, conquest, betrayal, murder, religion, and passion in an eloquent and exquisite telling.’ Kirkus Reviews.

A Blue Tale

Published to great acclaim in France in 1993, this collection is not only a delight for Marguerite Yourcenar fans but a welcome port of entry for any reader not yet familiar with the author’s lengthier, more demanding works. The sole published work of fiction by Yourcenar yet to be translated into English, this collection includes three stories written between 1927 and 1930 when the author was in her mid twenties. These stories cover a range of themes, from an allegory on greed and a scene from the war of the sexes, to a witchhunt that obsessively creates its own quarry. For the devoted readers of Yourcenar, this collection allows a rare glimpse at the beginnings of a writer’s craft. In these accomplished but forgotten pieces, edited and introduced by her biographer, Josyane Savigneau, the reader will find the blend of fable and fairy tale of Oriental Tales, the psychological chronicle of Dear Departed, the ironic realism of A Coin in Nine Hands. Read as an introduction to Yourcenar’s work, the stories take us into the writer’s workshop, as it were, to the early days of creation. In either case, A Blue Tale and Other Stories carries the unmistakable voice of a formidable and vastly talented writer. Marguerite Yourcenar her pseudonym was an anagram of her family name, Crayencour was born in Brussels in 1903 and died in Maine in 1987. One of the most respected writers in the French language, she is best known as the author of the best selling Memoirs of Hadrian and The Abyss. She was awarded many literary honors, most notably election to the Acad mie Francaise in 1980, the first woman to be so honored.

Dear Departed

First published in French in 1974 under the title ‘Souvenirs Pieux’, Dear Departed is the first volume of a trilogy by Marguerite Yourcenar, one of the most celebrated French writers of the century, devoted to her own origins and background. Yourcenar describes the events surrounding her birth in 1903, then takes us back through the centuries to meet her mother’s forebears: soldiers, essayists, idealists, hero*ines, even ambassadors. Throughout, the history of the family serves as a window on the history of a rapidly changing Europe. Using memoirs, letters and momentos, Yourcenar richly evokes both the larger events on the European stage and the rhythms and textures of everyday existence. Though rarely visible, Yourcenar is everywhere present, her perceptions rendered in her unmistakable voice. The book is a tour de force of historical and literary imagination.

Mishima

On November 25, 1970, Japan’s most renowned postwar novelist, Yukio Mishima, stunned the world by committing ritual suicide. Here, Marguerite Yourcenar, a brilliant reader of Mishima and a scholar with an eye for the cultural roles of fiction, unravels the author’s life and politics: his affection for Western culture, his family and his homosexuality, his brilliant writings, and his carefully premeditated death.

The Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays

Seven of Yourcenar’s most important critical essays, on subjects ranging from the Historia Augusta to Piranesi’s engravings. Essential to the understanding of the searching and remarkably informed spirit of this protean writer.