The Modern Novel

Biography

Marcel Proust was born in Auteuil (near Paris) in 1871. His father was a doctor, specialising in cholera, while his mother came from a well-to-do Jewish family. Proust was a sickly child and spent much time in the village of Illiers, which became the model for Combray and has now been renamed Illiers-Combray. Despite his ill-health, he served one year in the army and then became a man about town, spending his time in high society, though also meeting artists and writers. His parents pushed him to take up a proper job so he got a job at the Bibliothèque Mazarine but never actually worked there. His father died in 1903 and his beloved mother in 1905, leaving Proust a large inheritance. However, his health was deteriorating. He took to his bed and wrote his magnum opus. He died in 1922.

Books about Marcel Proust

Céleste Albaret: Monsieur Proust (available in French and English)
William C. Carter: Marcel Proust: A Life
Ronald Hayman: Proust: A Biography
Georges Painter: Marcel Proust: A Biography
J-Y. Tadié: Marcel Proust: A Life
Edmund White: Marcel Proust

Other sites

Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust Ephemera Site
The Proust Questionnaire
Marcel Proust: Beyond the Madeleines
Obituary
The Kolb-Proust Archive For Research
Proust (recomposed photographs – in English and French)
Marcel Proust (in French)
Marcel Proust écrivain impressionniste (in French)
La Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray (in French)
Marcel Proust (about the hotel where he stayed in Trouville which appeared in his novel – in French)
Marcel Proust l’écriture et les arts (website for an exhibition that took place in Paris in 2000 – in French)