Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (pronounced [maʁsɛl pʁust]) (10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, essayist and critic, best known as the author of À la recherche du temps perdu (in English, In Search of Lost Time; earlier translated as Remembrance of Things Past), a monumental work of twentieth-century fiction published in seven parts from 1913 to 1927.
Easton Press Marcel Proust books
Swann's Way - The Collector's Library of Famous Editions - 1982Franklin Library Marcel Proust books
Swann's Way - 20th Century's Greatest Books - 1980Swann's Way - 100 Greatest Books of All Time - 1982
Author Marcel Proust
The son of well-to-do bourgeois parents, Proust was born in Auteuil-Neuilly-Passy (the southern sector of Paris's then-rustic 16th arrondissement) at the home of his mother's uncle, two months after the Treaty of Frankfurt formally ended the Franco-Prussian War. His birth took place during the violence that surrounded the suppression of the Paris Commune, and corresponds with the consolidation of the French Third Republic. Much of In Search of Lost Time concerns the vast changes, most particularly the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the middle classes, that occurred in France during the Third Republic and the fin de siècle.Proust's father, Achille Adrien Proust, was a famous doctor and epidemiologist, responsible for studying and attempting to remedy the causes and movements of cholera through Europe and Asia. He was the author of about 20 books on topics throughout medicine and hygiene, as well as countless articles; as such, he was a model to Marcel. Proust's mother, Jeanne Clémence Weil, was the daughter of a rich and cultured Jewish family. She was highly literate and well-read. Her letters demonstrate a well-developed sense of humor, and her command of English was sufficient for her to provide the necessary impetus to her son's later attempts to translate John Ruskin (Tadié).
By the age of nine Proust had had his first serious asthma attack, and thereafter he was considered by himself, his family and his friends as a sickly child. Proust spent long holidays in the village of Illiers. This village, combined with aspects of the time he spent at his great-Uncle's house in Auteuil became the model for the fictional town of Combray, where some of the most important scenes of In Search of Lost Time take place. (Illiers was renamed Illiers-Combray on the occasion of the Proust centenary celebrations).
Despite his poor health, Proust served a year (1889–90) as an enlisted man in the French army, stationed at Coligny Caserne in Orléans, an experience that provided a lengthy episode in The Guermantes Way, volume three of his novel. As a young man Proust was a dilettante and a successful social climber, whose aspirations as a writer were hampered by his lack of application to work. His reputation from this period, as a snob and an aesthete, contributed to his later troubles with getting Swann's Way, the first volume of his huge novel, published in 1913.
Proust was quite close to his mother, despite her wishes that he apply himself to some sort of useful work. In order to appease his father, who insisted that he pursue a career, Proust obtained a volunteer position at the Bibliothèque Mazarine in the summer of 1896. After exerting considerable effort, he obtained a sick leave which was to extend for several years until he was considered to have resigned. He never worked at his job, and he didn't move from his parents' apartment until after both were dead (Tadié).
Proust was an intimate friend of the pianist and composer Reynaldo Hahn.
His life and family circle changed considerably between 1900 and 1905. In February of 1903 Proust's brother Robert married and left the family apartment. His father died in September of the same year. Finally, and most crushingly, Proust's beloved mother died in September of 1905. In addition to the grief that attended his mother's death, Proust's life changed due to a very large inheritance he received (in today's terms, a principal of about $6 million, with a monthly income of about $15,000). Despite this windfall, his health throughout this period continued to deteriorate.
Later life and death
Proust spent the last three years of his life largely confined to his cork-lined bedroom, sleeping during the day and working at night to complete his novel. He died in 1922 and is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time)
Begun
in 1909 and finished just before his death, In Search of Lost Time
consists of seven volumes spanning some 3,200 pages and teeming with
more than 2,000 characters. Graham Greene called Proust the "greatest
novelist of the 20th century", and Somerset Maugham called the novel the
"greatest fiction to date". Proust died before he was able to complete
his revision of the drafts and proofs of the last volumes, the last
three of which were published posthumously and edited by his brother,
Robert.
In 1995, Penguin undertook a fresh translation of In
Search of Lost Time by editor Christopher Prendergast and seven
translators in three countries, based on the latest and most
authoritative French text. Its six volumes were published in Britain
under the Allen Lane imprint in 2002. The first four (those which under
American copyright law are in the public domain) have since been
published in the U.S. under the Viking imprint and in paperback under
the Penguin Classics imprint.
Marcel Proust books
1896 Les plaisirs et les jours
1904 La Bible D'Amiens; a translation of Ruskin's The Bible of Amiens.
1906 Sésame et les lys; a translation of Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies.
1913-1927 À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time, also Remembrance of Things Past)
1913 Du côté de chez Swann (Swann's Way, also The Way by Swann's)
1918 À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleur (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, also Within a Budding Grove)
1920 Le côté de Guermantes (The Guermantes Way)
1922 Sodome et Gomorrhe (Sodom and Gomorrah, also Cities of the Plain)
1923 La prisonnière (The Prisoner, also The Captive)
1925 Albertine disparue (original title: La fugitive) (The Fugitive, also The Sweet Cheat Gone)
1927 Le temps retrouvé (Finding Time Again, also Time Regained and The Past Recaptured)
1919 Pastiches et mélanges
1954 Contre Sainte-Beuve
1954 Jean Santeuil (unfinished)
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