Proust, Marcel 1871-1922
French novelist

Marcel Proust was born in Auteuil, Paris. He was a semi-invalid all his life, and was cosseted by his mother. In the 1890s he moved in fashionable circles in Paris, and in 1896 he published a collection of stories and essays called Les Plaisirs et les jours (Eng trans Pleasures and Regrets, 1948). In 1897 he became involved in the Dreyfus affair, in which he supported Alfred Dreyfus. But his mother's death in 1905, when he was 34 years old, caused him to withdraw from society and immure himself in a soundproof apartment, where he gave himself over entirely to introspection. Delving into the self below the levels of superficial consciousness, he set himself the task of transforming into art the realities of experience as known to the inner emotional life.

It is evident from the 13 volumes which make up � la recherche du temps perdu ('Remembrance of Times Past'), a series of autobiographical novels, that no detail escaped his observant eye. Influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson, he subjected experience to searching analysis to divine in it beauties and complexities that escape the superficial response of ordinary intelligence. Proust evolved a mode of communication by image, evocation and analogy for displaying his characters: not as a realist would see them, superficially, from the outside, but in terms of their concealed emotional life, evolving on a plane that has nothing to do with temporal limitations.

Bibliography: � la recherche began with Du c�t� de chez Swann (1913, Eng trans Swann's Way, 1922) and, after a delay caused by World War I, � l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleur (1919, Eng trans Within a Budding Grove, 1924), which won the Prix Goncourt in 1919. Le C�t� de Guermantes (1920-21, 2 vols, Eng trans The Guermantes' Way, 1925) and Sodome et Gomorrhe (1922, 3 vols, Eng trans The Cities of the Plain, 1927) followed. These achieved an international reputation for Proust and an eager public awaited the posthumously published titles, La Prisonni�re (1923, Eng trans The Captive, 1929), Albertine disparue (1925, Eng trans The Sweet Cheat Gone, 1930) and Le Temps retrouv� (1927, Eng trans Time Regained, 1931), each in two volumes. Apart from his masterpieces, there was also posthumous publication of an early novel, Jean Santeuil (1952, Eng trans 1955) and a book of critical credo, Contre Sainte-Beuve (1954, Eng trans By Way of Sainte-Beuve, 1958).

A new English translation of � la recherche by D J Enright (1920- ) appeared under the title In Search of Lost Time in 1992.

Bibliography: R Hayman, Proust (1990); Andr� Maurois, Proust (Eng trans 1984); G D Painter, Proust: A Biography (2 vols, 1959-65).