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Marcel Prévost, was a far more
successful writer than Proust,
elected to the Académie Française
just as Proust was beginning his
lonely work on
À la Recherche du
Temps Perdu
. Proust lamented:
“I am totally unknown. . . . when
readers write to me at
Le Figaro
after an article, which happens
rarely, the letters are forwarded
to Marcel Prévost, for whom my
name seems to be no more than a
misprint.”When translator Scott
Moncrieff proposed an English
edition of Proust’s work, his
London publisher was similarly confused, forcing Moncrieff to clarify: “I fear
that my handwriting misled you.
À la Recherche du Temps Perdu
is not the work of
M. Marcel Prévost but of
M. PROUST
, a widely different person.” Text in French.
An extraordinary copy.
Marcel Proust, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
Paris: Bernard Grasset (volume I), 1913; Librairie Gallimard,
Nouvelle Revue Française (volumes II-XIII), 1918-1927.
Thirteen octavo volumes, original wrappers, original glassine. $65,000.
Complete first edition of Marcel Proust’s masterpiece, including the scarce first
issue of the first volume,
Du Côté de chez Swann
, inscribed to fellow writer Marcel
Prévost: “Hommage admiratif / Marcel Proust.”
In
À la Recherche du Temps Perdu
, first translated into English as
Remembrance of
Things Past
and later as
In Search of Lost Time
, Proust produced one of the most
original of all novels: a brilliant evocation of Belle Epoque France composed of the
narrator’s fleeting, haunting impressions: “Le souvenir d’une certaine image n’est
que le regret d’un certain instant.” Early readers were baffled by Proust’s apparent
unwillingness to get to the point: André Gide, reading for the Nouvelle Revue
Française, was one of three publishers to reject the book. After Proust himself had
paid for the first volume’s publication with Bernard Grasset, Gide declared that
“the rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the
NRF,” and went on to publish the remaining twelve volumes, the final eleven in
limited editions. The dedicatee of this copy, the popular novelist and dramatist
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