Marcel Proust 1871 – 1922

Biography

Marcel Proust was a French novelist whose masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time, is one of the great achievements of modern literature. Born in Paris in 1871, he grew up in a prosperous family and suffered from asthma throughout his life. After early society sketches and a translation of Ruskin, he withdrew into a cork-lined bedroom and devoted his final years to his vast novel, published in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927, the last three posthumously. Through the narrator’s memories, triggered by such moments as the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea, Proust explored time, memory, love, jealousy, and the decline of French aristocratic society. He died in Paris in 1922, still revising his manuscript, and was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery. His novel’s influence on modern literature is immense, and its famous madeleine episode has entered everyday language as a symbol of involuntary memory.