Table Of ContentMarcel Proust
Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural
figures of the modern period. Each book explores the life of the
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In the same series
Georges Bataille Marcel Duchamp Pablo Neruda
Stuart Kendall Caroline Cros Dominic Moran
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Rosemary Lloyd Mike O’Mahony Nick Caistor
Simone de Beauvoir Michel Foucault Pablo Picasso
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Walter Benjamin Jean Genet Ezra Pound
Esther Leslie Stephen Barber Alec Marsh
Jorge Luis Borges Allen Ginsberg Jean-Paul Sartre
Jason Wilson Steve Finbow Andrew Leak
Constantin Brancusi Derek Jarman Erik Satie
Sanda Miller Michael Charlesworth Mary E. Davis
Charles Bukowski Alfred Jarry Gertrude Stein
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Phil Baker Andrew Gibson Palle Yourgrau
Coco Chanel Franz Kafka Ludwig Wittgenstein
Linda Simon Sander L. Gilman Edward Kanterian
Noam Chomsky Lenin Frank Lloyd Wright
Wolfgang B. Sperlich Lars T. Lih Robert McCarter
Jean Cocteau Stéphane Mallarmé
James S. Williams Roger Pearson
Salvador Dalí Gabriel García Márquez
Mary Ann Caws Stephen M. Hart
Guy Debord Karl Marx
Andy Merrifield Paul Thomas
Claude Debussy Eadweard Muybridge
David J. Code Marta Braun
Fyodor Dostoevsky Vladimir Nabokov
Robert Bird Barbara Wyllie
Marcel Proust
Adam Watt
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First published 2013
Copyright © Adam Watt 2013
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
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of the publishers.
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Bell & Bain, Glasgow
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Watt, Adam A. (Adam Andrew), 1979–
Marcel Proust. –(Critical lives)
1. Proust, Marcel,1871-1922. 2.Novelists, French–20th
century–Biography.
I. Title II. Series
843.9'12-dc23
isbn 978 1 78023 094 8
Contents
Texts and Abbreviations 7
Introduction 9
1 Physician Heal thy Son 13
2 Asthmatic Absentee / Marcel Militaire 32
3 Undergraduate, Critic, Duellist 54
4 Intellectual, Translator, Mourner 76
5 Beginnings and Endings 99
6 SwannPublished and Alfred Disparu 122
7 The Great War 144
8 Recognition and Decline 168
References 195
Select Bibliography 203
Acknowledgements 208
Photo Acknowledgements 208
Texts and Abbreviations
Quotations from Proust’s novel are taken from the Vintage Classics edition
of In Search of Lost Time, six volumes, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff
(except for Time Regained,translated by Andreas Mayor and Terence
Kilmartin), revised by Terence Kilmartin and D. J. Enright (London,
2000–2002). References are incorporated in the text using the volume title
and page number (e.g. Swann’s Way, 45), followed by Roman numeral volume
number and page reference from the four-volume ‘Pléiade’ edition of A la
recherche du temps perdu, edited by Jean-Yves Tadié et al. (Paris, 1987–9).
Where my reading of the French is at odds with the Vintage translation I have
modified this, indicated by ‘trans. mod.’
Quotations fromProust’s shorter writings are taken from Against Sainte-
Beuve and Other Essays, translated by John Sturrock (Harmondsworth, 1988)
and Contre Sainte-Beuve précédé de pastiches et mélanges et suivi de essais et
articles,edited by Pierre Clarac and Yves Sandre (Paris, 1971); references take
the abbreviated form asbor csb, each followed by page numbers. Sturrock’s
volume is a selection: where I cite only csb, the material quoted has not been
published in translation.
All references to Proust’s correspondence (abbreviated to ‘Corr.’, followed
by a volume number and page reference) are to the Correspondance de Marcel
Proust,ed. Philip Kolb, 21vols (Paris, 1970–93). Translations from the
correspondence, and from all other works in French, unless otherwise
stated, are my own.
7
Marcel Proust photographed by Otto, 1896.
