Swann's Way is volume one of In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past (French: À la recherche du temps perdu) a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine". The novel is widely referred to in English as Remembrance of Things Past but the title In Search of Lost Time, a literal rendering of the French, has gained in usage since D.J. Enright's adopted it in his 1992 revision of the earlier translation by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. The complete story contains nearly 1.5 million words and is one of the longest novels in world literature.
Easton Press editions
Swann's Way - The Collector's Library of Famous Editions - 1982Franklin Library editions
Swann's Way - 20th Century's Greatest Books - 1980Swann's Way - 100 Greatest Books of All Time - 1982
Swann's Way - Oxford Library of The World's Greatest Books - 1983
(This page contains affiliate links for which we may be compensated.)
The novel as we know it began to take shape in 1909 and work continued for the remainder of Proust's life, broken off only by his final illness and death in the autumn of 1922. The structure was established early on and the novel is complete as a work of art and a literary cosmos but Proust kept adding new material through his final years while editing one time after another for print; the final three volumes contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages which existed in draft at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.
The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927; Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand. Many of its ideas, motifs and scenes appear in adumbrated form in Proust's unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1896–99), though the perspective and treatment there are different and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09). The novel has had great influence on twentieth-century literature, whether because writers have sought to emulate it or attempted to parody and discredit some of its traits. Proust explores the themes of time, space and memory but the novel is above all a condensation of innumerable literary, structural, stylistic and thematic possibilities.
Although different editions divide the work into a varying number of tomes, A la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time is a novel consisting of seven volumes.
1 Swann's Way or The Way by Swann's - 1913
2 Within a Budding Grove or In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower - 1919
3 The Guermantes Way (published in two volumes) - 1920/21
4 Cities of the Plain or Sodom and Gomorrah (published in two volumes) - 1921/22
5 The Captive or The Prisoner - 1923
6 The Fugitive, The Sweet Cheat Gone or Albertine Gone - 1925
7 The Past Recaptured, Time Regained or Finding Time Again - 1927
Volume 1: Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann, sometimes translated as The Way by Swann's) (1913) was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorf, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). André Gide famously was given the manuscript to read to advise NRF on publication, and leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic bloopers, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay for the costs of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 316-7).
Du côté de chez Swann is divided into four parts: "Combray I" (sometimes referred to in English as the "Overture"), "Combray II," "Un Amour de Swann," and "Noms de pays: le nom." ('Names of places: the name'). A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, "Un Amour de Swann" is sometimes published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann's love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools. "Combray I" is also similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous "Madeleine cookie" episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory.
In early 1914, André Gide, who had been involved in NRF's rejection of the book, wrote to Proust to apologize and to offer congratulations on the novel. "For several days I have been unable to put your book down.... The rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the NRF and, since I bear the shame of being very much responsible for it, one of the most stinging and remorseful regrets of my life" (Tadié, 611). Gallimard (the publishing arm of NRF) offered to publish the remaining volumes, but Proust chose to stay with Grasset.
Volume 2: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, also translated as Within a Budding Grove) (1919), scheduled to be published in 1914, was delayed by the onset of World War I. At the same time, Grasset's firm was closed down when the publisher went into military service. This freed Proust to move to Gallimard, where all the subsequent volumes were published. Meanwhile, the novel kept growing in length and in conception.
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1919.
Volume 3: The Guermantes Way (Le Côté de Guermantes) (1920) and Le Côté de Guermantes II (1921).
Volume 4: Sodom and Gomorrah (Sodome et Gomorrhe, sometimes translated as Cities of the Plain) (1921) and Sodome et Gomorrhe II (1922). It was the last volume over which Proust supervised publication before his death in November 1922. The publication of the remaining volumes was carried out by his brother, Robert Proust, and Jacques Rivière.
Volume 5: The Prisoner (La Prisonnière, also translated as The Captive) (1923). The name "Albertine" first appears in Proust's notebooks in 1913. The material in these volumes was developed during the hiatus between the publication of Volumes 1 and 2, and they are a departure from the three-volume series announced by Proust in Du côté de chez Swann.
Volume 6: The Fugitive (Albertine disparue, also titled La Fugitive, sometimes translated as The Sweet Cheat Gone (the last line of Walter de la Mare's poem "The Ghost" or Albertine Gone) (1925) is the most editorially vexed volume. As noted, the final three volumes of the novel were published posthumously, and without Proust's final corrections and revisions. The first edition, based on Proust's manuscript, was published as Albertine disparue to prevent it from being confused with Rabindranath Tagore's La Fugitive (1921). The first authoritative edition of the novel in French (1954), also based on Proust's manuscript, used the title La Fugitive. The second, even more authoritative French edition (1987–89) uses the title Albertine disparue and is based on an unmarked typescript acquired in 1962 by the Bibliothèque Nationale. To complicate matters, after the death in 1986 of Proust's niece, Suzy Mante-Proust, her son-in-law discovered among her papers a typescript that had been corrected and annotated by Proust. The late changes Proust made include a small, crucial detail and the deletion of approximately 150 pages. This version was published as Albertine disparue in France in 1987.
Volume 7: Finding Time Again (Le Temps retrouvé, also translated as Time Regained and The Past Recaptured) (1927) was written at the same time as Du côté de chez Swann, but was revised and expanded during the course of the novel's publication to account for, to a greater or lesser success, the then unforeseen material now contained in the middle volumes (Terdiman, 153n3). This volume includes a noteworthy episode describing Paris during the First World War.
Source and additional information: In Search of Lost Time
The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927; Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand. Many of its ideas, motifs and scenes appear in adumbrated form in Proust's unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil (1896–99), though the perspective and treatment there are different and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1908–09). The novel has had great influence on twentieth-century literature, whether because writers have sought to emulate it or attempted to parody and discredit some of its traits. Proust explores the themes of time, space and memory but the novel is above all a condensation of innumerable literary, structural, stylistic and thematic possibilities.
Although different editions divide the work into a varying number of tomes, A la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time is a novel consisting of seven volumes.
1 Swann's Way or The Way by Swann's - 1913
2 Within a Budding Grove or In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower - 1919
3 The Guermantes Way (published in two volumes) - 1920/21
4 Cities of the Plain or Sodom and Gomorrah (published in two volumes) - 1921/22
5 The Captive or The Prisoner - 1923
6 The Fugitive, The Sweet Cheat Gone or Albertine Gone - 1925
7 The Past Recaptured, Time Regained or Finding Time Again - 1927
Volume 1: Swann's Way (Du côté de chez Swann, sometimes translated as The Way by Swann's) (1913) was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorf, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF). André Gide famously was given the manuscript to read to advise NRF on publication, and leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic bloopers, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay for the costs of publication himself. When published it was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 316-7).
Du côté de chez Swann is divided into four parts: "Combray I" (sometimes referred to in English as the "Overture"), "Combray II," "Un Amour de Swann," and "Noms de pays: le nom." ('Names of places: the name'). A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, "Un Amour de Swann" is sometimes published as a volume by itself. As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann's love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools. "Combray I" is also similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous "Madeleine cookie" episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory.
In early 1914, André Gide, who had been involved in NRF's rejection of the book, wrote to Proust to apologize and to offer congratulations on the novel. "For several days I have been unable to put your book down.... The rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the NRF and, since I bear the shame of being very much responsible for it, one of the most stinging and remorseful regrets of my life" (Tadié, 611). Gallimard (the publishing arm of NRF) offered to publish the remaining volumes, but Proust chose to stay with Grasset.
Volume 2: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, also translated as Within a Budding Grove) (1919), scheduled to be published in 1914, was delayed by the onset of World War I. At the same time, Grasset's firm was closed down when the publisher went into military service. This freed Proust to move to Gallimard, where all the subsequent volumes were published. Meanwhile, the novel kept growing in length and in conception.
À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1919.
Volume 3: The Guermantes Way (Le Côté de Guermantes) (1920) and Le Côté de Guermantes II (1921).
Volume 4: Sodom and Gomorrah (Sodome et Gomorrhe, sometimes translated as Cities of the Plain) (1921) and Sodome et Gomorrhe II (1922). It was the last volume over which Proust supervised publication before his death in November 1922. The publication of the remaining volumes was carried out by his brother, Robert Proust, and Jacques Rivière.
Volume 5: The Prisoner (La Prisonnière, also translated as The Captive) (1923). The name "Albertine" first appears in Proust's notebooks in 1913. The material in these volumes was developed during the hiatus between the publication of Volumes 1 and 2, and they are a departure from the three-volume series announced by Proust in Du côté de chez Swann.
Volume 6: The Fugitive (Albertine disparue, also titled La Fugitive, sometimes translated as The Sweet Cheat Gone (the last line of Walter de la Mare's poem "The Ghost" or Albertine Gone) (1925) is the most editorially vexed volume. As noted, the final three volumes of the novel were published posthumously, and without Proust's final corrections and revisions. The first edition, based on Proust's manuscript, was published as Albertine disparue to prevent it from being confused with Rabindranath Tagore's La Fugitive (1921). The first authoritative edition of the novel in French (1954), also based on Proust's manuscript, used the title La Fugitive. The second, even more authoritative French edition (1987–89) uses the title Albertine disparue and is based on an unmarked typescript acquired in 1962 by the Bibliothèque Nationale. To complicate matters, after the death in 1986 of Proust's niece, Suzy Mante-Proust, her son-in-law discovered among her papers a typescript that had been corrected and annotated by Proust. The late changes Proust made include a small, crucial detail and the deletion of approximately 150 pages. This version was published as Albertine disparue in France in 1987.
Volume 7: Finding Time Again (Le Temps retrouvé, also translated as Time Regained and The Past Recaptured) (1927) was written at the same time as Du côté de chez Swann, but was revised and expanded during the course of the novel's publication to account for, to a greater or lesser success, the then unforeseen material now contained in the middle volumes (Terdiman, 153n3). This volume includes a noteworthy episode describing Paris during the First World War.
Source and additional information: In Search of Lost Time