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.

Interest in Proust in the anglophone world was rekindled in 1997, with the publication of Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life.

Original French publication

• Du côté de chez Swann, Grasset, 1913 (Swann's Way)
  • Part 1: Combray
  • Part 2: Un amour de Swann (Swann in Love)
  • Part 3: Noms de pays: le nom (Place Names: The Name)
• À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF), 1919, Goncourt Prize (Within a Budding Grove)
  • Part 1: Autour de Mme Swann (Madame Swann at Home)
  • Part 2: Noms de pays: le pays (Place Names: The Place)

• Le Côté de Guermantes I & II, NRF, 1921-1922 (The Guermantes Way)
• Sodome et Gomorrhe I & II, NRF, 1922-1923 (Cities of the Plain)
• La Prisonnière, NRF, 1923 (The Captive)
• Albertine disparue (La Fugitive), NRF, 1925 (The Sweet Cheat Gone, later The Fugitive)
• Le Temps retrouvé, NRF, 1927 (Time Regained)