Born in Brussels, Belgium, on June 8, 1903, Marguerite Yourcenar spent much of her life in France and the United States. Daughter of a Belgian father and a French mother, she was homeschooled and showed from an early age a great interest in literature and the arts. Her most famous work is "Memoirs of Hadrian" (1951), a historical novel that recreates the life of the Roman emperor Hadrian with remarkable psychological depth and scholarship. Other important works include "The Copia of the Bones" and "Alexis, or the Treatise on the Vain Combat." Yourcenar also dedicated herself to translation, especially of Greek and Latin texts, and wrote essays on literature and history. Her writing is characterized by clarity, intellectual rigor, and a melancholic, yet serene, view of existence. She passed away in 1987, in the United States.