pMarguerite Yourcenar is best known as the author of the 1951 novel emMmoires d'Hadrienem, her recreation of the life of the Roman emperor Hadrian. The work can be examined from the perspective of the issues raised by writing Roman imperial biography at large and the many ways in which emMmoiresem has a claim to historical authenticity.p pIn emMarguerite Yourcenar's Hadrianem, Keith Bradley explains how emMmoires d'Hadrienem came to be written, gives details of Yourcenar's own biography, and describes some of the intricate historical problems that her novel's portrait of Hadrian presents. He draws on Yourcenar's correspondence, her interviews with journalists, and her literary corpus as a whole, emphasizing Yourcenar's profound knowledge of the ancient evidence on which her life of Hadrian is based and exploiting a wide range of contemporary Yourcenarian criticism.p pThe book pays special attention to the methods by which Yourcenar believed Hadrian's life history to be recoverable, com