Today’s Doodle, illustrated by London-based guest artist Marguerite Dumans, celebrates the 117th birthday of French writer Marguerite Yourcenar, widely admired for her masterful use of historical settings to explore modern issues and universal themes. Yourcenar’s literary accomplishments positioned her to become the first woman elected to the prestigious Académie Française (“French Academy”), an organization founded in 1635 dedicated to the preservation of the French language with a membership limited to only 40 linguistic scholars.
On this day in 1903, Marguerite de Crayencour was born into a wealthy family in Brussels, Belgium. She moved to Paris as a child with her father, who eschewed public education in favor of private tutors, books, and museums. In 1921, she published her first book of poetry, assuming the pen name “Yourcenar,” a close anagram of her surname “Crayencour.”
Considered one of the first notable openly lesbian writers, Yourcenar received critical acclaim for her first novella, “Alexis” (1929), which centered around a title character who comes out as gay to his wife. During the ’30s, she traveled Europe amid a bohemian artistic scene, but with the outbreak of World War II, she settled in the United States with her long-time partner and translator, Grace Frick. There she completed “Mémoires d’Hadrien” (“Memoirs of Hadrian” 1951), a fictionalized account of the titular Roman emperor that is widely considered her masterpiece.
Yourcenar was honored with many accolades, including two Prix Femina (“Femina Prizes”), as well as the Grand Prix de Littérature (Grand Prize for Literature) awarded in 1977 by the Académie Française, which she historically joined three years later.
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