French · 1903–1987
French-American novelist and essayist, the first woman elected to the Académie française. Born Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour in Brussels (the pen name is an anagram), she lost her mother at birth and was educated privately by her father. Memoirs of Hadrian (1951) took decades to write—an emperor's imagined letter to his successor, meditating on power, love, and mortality with lapidary precision. The Abyss followed a Renaissance philosopher-physician through heresy and enlightenment. She settled on Mount Desert Island, Maine, with her partner Grace Frick, translating spirituals and Virginia Woolf. Her prose holds still and looks hard at time.