The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.

In 1951 Marguerite Yourcenar publiMarguerite Yourcenard in France the novel Mémoires d'Hadrien which Marguerite Yourcenar had been writing with pauses for a decade. This novel has become a modern classic a standard against which fictional recreations of antiquity are measured. "One of the respected writers in French language Marguerite Yourcenar publiMarguerite Yourcenard many novels essays and poems as well as three volumes of memoirs.

Marguerite Yourcenar (8 June 1903 – 17 December 1987) was a Belgian-born French novelist and essayist.