PROUST, MARCEL

born July 10, 1871, Auteuil, near Paris, France died Nov. 18, 1922, Paris French novelist, author of la recherche du temps perdu (191327; Remembrance of Things Past), a seven-volume novel based on Proust's life told psychologically and allegorically. Additional reading Bibliographies on Proust may be found in D.W. Alden, Marcel Proust and His French Critics (1940, reprinted 1973), listing books and articles in French, and continued for the period after 1940 and for all languages in his Bibliography of Critical and Biographical References for the Study of Contemporary French Literature (194953; as French VII Bibliography, 195468; as French XX Bibliography, 1969 ). Letters. Selected letters in Letters of Marcel Proust, trans. and ed. by Mina Curtiss (1950); and Marcel Proust: Selected Letters 18801903 (1983), ed. by Philip Kolb and trans. by Ralph Manheim. Biography. G.D. Painter, Marcel Proust, 2 vol. (U.S. titles, Proust: The Early Years and Proust: The Later Years; 195965, reprinted 1978), a full-scale biography; shorter biographies include Andr Maurois, la recherche de Marcel Proust (1949; The Quest for Proust, 1950), and Le Monde de Marcel Proust (1960; The World of Marcel Proust, 1974), a pictorial biography; Richard H. Barker, Marcel Proust (1958); Marthe Bibesco, Au bal avec Marcel Proust (1928; Marcel Proust at the Ball, 1956). Criticism. Leo Bersani, Marcel Proust: The Fictions of Life and Art (1965); Germaine Bre, Marcel Proust and Deliverance from Time, 2nd ed. (1969); Howard Moss, The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust (1962); Roger Shattuck, Proust's Binoculars: A Study of Memory, Time, and Recognition in la recherche du temps perdu (1963)the foregoing are creative studies of complementary insight and importance; P. Hansford Johnson, Six Proust Reconstructions (1958), radio plays of critical value; P.A. Spalding, A Reader's Handbook to Proust (1952); Germaine Bre, The World of Marcel Proust (1966), a general study; Marcel Proust: A Critical Panorama, ed. by Larkin B. Price (1973), a collection of essays. J.E. Rivers, Proust and the Art of Love: The Aesthetics of Sexuality in the Life, Times, and Art of Marcel Proust (1980), treats homosexual love in the light of Proust's sources on the subject.