Marcel Proust correspondence

Brandeis’s collection of Marcel Proust correspondence contains 23 of Proust’s letters, ranging from February of 1913, the year Proust published the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, Du côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way), to September of 1916, the year he parted ways with his first publisher, Bernard Grasset. The letters, all written by Proust to Grasset (except one, addressed to Grasset’s business partner Louis Brun), reveal Proust’s sometimes fraught relationship with his publisher, his concerns about the format and reception of his novel, and the themes he hoped to communicate to his audience. While twenty of the letters are undated, they were published as part of Proust’s correspondence (with dates) by Proust scholar Philip Kolb between 1971 and 1992. All but one of the letters are handwritten, and three are accompanied by typed transcriptions in French. Only one letter has an attached English translation in the collection, but seven within the collection were published in translated form by Kolb in his 1992 book, Marcel Proust: Selected Letters.