July 10: Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust was born on this date in 1871 in Paris. His monumental novel, Remembrance of Things Past (À la recherche du temps perdu), was published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927 (and first translated into English between 1922 and 1931). It is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential novels of the 20th century, yet Proust had to pay for the publication of its first volume. Remembrance (more recently translated as In Search of Lost Time) is a richly detailed and sensual account of the decline of the French aristocracy and the rise of the middle class during the fin de siecle, with some 2,000 characters emerging from its narrator’s memory in the course of a sleepless night. It was also one of the first novels to deal openly and at some length with homosexuality (which was Proust’s sexual orientation). Proust was also a literary essayist and society columnist. He died in 1922.

“Reading is that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.” —Marcel Proust