Marilyn Yalom (photo by Reid Yalom)

We are sad to inform you that Marilyn Yalom died in November, 2019. She was a teacher to the end,  viewing her impending death as “the culmination of a rich life,” rather than a tragedy. 
 
She was productive through her year-long illness. As she sat on the couch in her Palo Alto home, looking out the windows at the roses and apricot trees in the backyard, she dreamed up not one, but two books she wanted to complete before her time was up. Both will be published in 2021. ​

Biographical Sketch

Marilyn Yalom grew up in Washington D.C. and was educated at Wellesley College, the Sorbonne, Harvard and Johns Hopkins. She was married to the psychiatrist Irvin Yalom for more than sixty years, with whom she welcomed and enjoyed four children and eight  grandchildren. She was a professor of French and comparative literature, director of an institute for research on women, a popular speaker on the lecture circuit, and the author of numerous books and articles on literature and women's history. 

Her books have been translated into 20 languages. In 1991 she was decorated as an Officier des Palmes Académiques by the French Government.
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Books by Marilyn Yalom include The Amorous Heart (2018), The Social Sex: A History of Female Friendship (2015), How the French Invented Love: 900 Years of Passion and Romance (2012), The American Resting Place with Reid Yalom (2008),  Birth of the Chess Queen (2004), A History of the Wife (2001), A History of the Breast(1997), Blood Sisters: The French Revolution in Women's Memory (1993), and Maternity, Mortality, and the Literature of Madness (1985).