Marcel Proust

Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (born 10 July 1871, died 18 November 1922) was a French writer, famous for one work, the largely autobiographical novel In Search of Lost Time, which runs to over 3000 pages.

The French original À la recherche du temps perdu was published over a number of years (1913-27) in seven volumes. It was simultaneously translated into English by C. K. Scott Moncrieff with the title Remembrance of Things Past (after Shakespeare, Sonnet 30) and became, as Cyril Connolly remarked, almost a work of English literature itself. A new English version, a reworking of Moncrieff's by Terence Kilmartin, with the title closer to the French original, was published in 1981.

Proust's style is characterised by very long sentences with many subordinate clauses. In the anglophone world, interest in his work was rekindled in 1997, with the publication of Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life.