Marcel Proust (1871–1922) was a French novelist, the author of In Search of Lost Time, a novel in seven volumes about memory, love, jealousy, society and art. Its first volume, Swann's Way, appeared in 1913; the last were published after his death.
A Parisian childhood
Marcel Proust was born on 10 July 1871 in Auteuil, then just outside Paris, the son of a celebrated doctor, Adrien Proust, and of Jeanne Weil, from a wealthy Jewish family. From the age of nine he suffered from severe asthma.
He studied at the Lycée Condorcet and took a degree in law and philosophy. As a young man he frequented the most elegant salons of Paris, where he observed the aristocracy he would later portray, and published a first book, Les Plaisirs et les Jours, in 1896.
Ruskin and the long novel
Proust spent years translating the English critic John Ruskin, with his mother's help. He also wrote an unfinished novel, Jean Santeuil, and essays against the critic Sainte-Beuve, from which the great novel slowly grew.
After his parents' deaths, he withdrew from society. In his cork-lined bedroom on the boulevard Haussmann he worked at night, rewriting and enlarging his manuscript, pasting new passages onto the proofs.
In Search of Lost Time
Swann's Way was published at Proust's own expense by Grasset in 1913, after other publishers, including the Nouvelle Revue Française, had turned it down. The war delayed the rest; Within a Budding Grove won the Prix Goncourt in 1919 and made him famous.
Proust died of pneumonia in Paris on 18 November 1922, still correcting the last volumes. The Prisoner, The Fugitive and Time Regained were published by his brother Robert between 1923 and 1927. The English translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff began to appear in 1922.
Anecdotes
The madeleine
The most famous scene of the novel, in which the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea brings back the narrator's whole childhood, appeared in Swann's Way. In early drafts, the cake was a slice of toast.
A rejected manuscript
André Gide, reading for the Nouvelle Revue Française, turned down Swann's Way in 1912. He later wrote to Proust that it was one of the most serious mistakes of the publishing house, and the NRF published the following volumes.
Frequently asked questions
What is In Search of Lost Time about?
A narrator recalls his life, his loves and the high society of Paris around 1900, and discovers in the end that involuntary memory and art can recover lost time.
How long is Proust's novel?
Seven volumes and more than three thousand pages in most editions, which makes it one of the longest novels in literature.
Which volume won the Prix Goncourt?
The second, À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, translated as Within a Budding Grove, in 1919.