Centennial 2013

Swann's Way

This year we celebrate the centennial of Swann's Way, the first book of In Search of Lost Time. In celebration, we compiled a time line of world events leading up to the publication.

1912

March 21

Le Figaro publishes Épines blanches, épines roses (White thorns, pink thorns) an excerpt from Swann's Way about the hawthorns in bloom.

1912

April 15

The Titanic sinks in the north Atlantic ocean.

1912

June 4

Proust goes to see an exhibition of Claude Monet's paintings at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris. The exhibition included many paintings of Venice.

1912

Mid-June

Proust hears Jean Cocteau recite his poems from La Danse de Sophocle. He spends the evening with Cocteau.

1912

October 1

Proust attends the one hundredth performance of Jules Massenet's opera, Hérodiade, at the Gaîté-Lyrique.

1912

November 5

Woodrow Wilson was elected as twenty-eighth President of the United States.

1912

December

Two publishing houses (Fasquelle and Gallimard) reject Proust's manuscript.

A website celebrating the life and works of Marcel Proust

Proust in the News

14th

The Proust family chez Tante Léonie. Patricia Mante-Proust, a descendant of Proust, visited us in Birmingham with her parents when she was very young. The visit (1988) corresponded with a production of Proust by Frank and Jane Trechsel at the Festival Theater and the Prousts were in the audience. This article was posted by L'Echo Républicain by Joel Anfray.

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22nd

The Wall Street Journal: You Are What You Read. No one should read Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" for the first time. A first reading, however carefully conducted, cannot hope to unlock the book's complexity, its depth, its inexhaustible richness. This is a lucid exposition of how Proust put his reading to work in the creation of "In Search of Lost Time."

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31st

Monsieur Proust's Library. Anka Muhlstein, one of the Center for Fiction's favorite speakers is back to talk about her new book, Monsieur Proust's Library.

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