Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust, (1871-1922). French novelist. The son of a doctor, he suffered from asthma from childhood. Although he took degrees in law and literature, the death of his parents in 1903 and 1905 left him wealthy and he retired to begin work on the nine-volume novel In Search of Lost Time (1913-27), which occupied the rest of his life. The first volume, Swann’s Way (1914), was refused by publishers and had to be produced at his own expense; by the time his second volume was published in 1919 Proust was world-famous. The remaining volumes were published after his death from pneumonia. He is remembered for his eccentricities, such as the corklined room in which he worked in total isolation from the outside world.
