Memoirs of Hadrian

First UK edition. Crown 8vo. 320 pp. Maroon cloth boards, titled in gilt to spine; map endpapers by George Mansell. Pictorial dustwrapper priced 12s. 6d. to front flap, with the 15s. net inked out by the publisher. With the scarce Book Society Choice armband. Translated from the French by Grace Frick in collaboration with the Author. Preceded by the 1954 U.S. edition, published by Farrar, Straus and Young in New York. Originally issued in 1951 by Librairie Plon, in Paris, as Mémoires d'Hadrien, following the publication of three excerpts in issues 43/44/45 (July to September 1951) of the monthly review La Table Ronde.

Dustwrapper partially torn (with very slight loss) across upper front panel, else Fine. An exceptionally 'fresh' copy.

Winner of the Prix Femina-Vacaresco (1952). 'Ghosted biography' of Roman Emperor Hadrian (AD 76–138) by the first woman to be elected to the Academie Française. While crafting a prose style as elegant and precise as those of the Latin stylists of Hadrian's own era, Marguerite Yourcenar here animates his arduous boyhood and finally – as emperor – his gradual re-ordering of a war-torn world, in the form of a testamentary letter to his successor, Marcus Aurelius. Written between December 1948 and December 1950, after a long gestation and many false starts, dating from the 1920's when she first visited Hadrian's villa in Rome in the company of her father. The book was met with immediate acclaim upon publication and is the mainstay of her considerable reputation. "A timeless masterpiece." –Paul Bailey