Share

Marcel Proust biography

1 photo

Quick Facts

  • NAME: Marcel Proust
  • OCCUPATION: Author
  • BIRTH DATE: July 10, 1871
  • DEATH DATE: November 18, 1922
  • PLACE OF BIRTH: Auteuil, France
  • PLACE OF DEATH: Paris, France
more about Marcel

Best Known For

Marcel Proust is a French author best known for writing the seven part novel In Search of Lost Time, or Remembrance of Things Past.

Synopsis

Marcel Proust, born into a wealthy French family on July 10, 1871, started his writing career covering the exclusive Parisian drawing rooms. Proust was half-Jewish, which led him to support Alfred Dreyfus during the infamous anti-Semitic affair. Upon the death of his mother, Proust began a voluntary seclusion that led him to write the seven part work, In Search of Lost Time, or Remembrance of Things Past.

Contents

Quotes

A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.
– Marcel Proust
A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.


– Marcel Proust

(born July 10, 1871, Auteuil, near Paris, France—died Nov. 18, 1922, Paris) French novelist. Born to a wealthy family, he studied law and literature. His social connections allowed him to become an observant habitué of the most exclusive drawing rooms of the nobility, and he wrote social pieces for Parisian journals. He published essays and stories, including the story collection Pleasures and Days (1896). He had suffered from asthma since childhood, and 1897 he began to disengage from social life as his health declined. Half-Jewish himself, he became a major supporter of Alfred Dreyfus in the affair that made French anti-Semitism into a national issue. Deeply affected by his mother's death in 1905, he withdrew further from society. An incident of involuntary revival of childhood memory in 1909 led him to retire almost totally into an eccentric seclusion in his cork-lined bedroom to write la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27; In Search of Lost Time, or Remembrance of Things Past). The vast seven-part novel is at once a kind of autobiography, a vast social panorama of France in the years just before and during World War I, and an immense meditation on love and jealousy and on art and its relation to reality. One of the supreme achievements in fiction of all time, it brought him worldwide fame and affected the entire climate of the 20th-century novel.

Copyright © 1994-2011 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. For more information visit Britannica.com

ADVERTISEMENT

GetGlue

9447934 9447934
profile id: 9447934
profile name: Marcel Proust
profile occupation:
related profile id: 9447934
related profile name: Marcel Proust
related profile occupation:
related profile img: /imported/images/Biography/Images/Profiles/P/Marcel-Proust-9447934-1-402.jpg
related profile URL: /people/marcel-proust-9447934
profile
pop
Your Connections

Sign in with Facebook to see how you and your friends are connected to famous icons.

specific profile connection
See More Bio Connections
Your Friends' Connections
specific friend connection
Profile Connections
    Show More Connections
    Included In These Groups

    See all related groups

    Celebrity Connections

    Show More Connections
    Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!