How Many Years

The French writer Marguerite Yourcenar devoted Dear Departed to her maternal forebears. In this volume the focus switches to her father's family in north-eastern France. A tumultuous history is revealed through the eyes of a remarkable gallery of ancestors: canonesses and matriarchs, statesmen and scoundrels, merchants and artists (Rubens had married into the family). However, the central story is of the turbulent youth, numerous affairs, desertion from the army and vagabond spirit of Michel de Crayencour, Yourcenar's father, who educated his daughter and fostered in her the intellectual qualities that are characteristic of her work.