"Friendship, friendship, just a perfect blendship"--so wrote Cole Porter for the musical DuBarry Was A Lady--a song and a sentiment we all can harmonize with. We all have friends, and if some writers have been more than a bit cynical--Emerson thought that friendship resembled the immortality of the soul "in that it is too good to be true," and Schopenhauer compared friendship to a sea serpent, "no one knows whether they are fabulous or really exist somewhere"--for the most part the world's literature and our own experience are filled with fine examples.
In The Oxford Book of Friendship, one of England's best known poets, D.J. Enright, and David Rawlinson have brought together some of the world's best thoughts on friendship, found in excerpts from Shakespeare and the Bible, novels and poems, autobiographies, letters, and diaries, even personal ads from The New York Review of Books ("Handsome NYC poet emeritus, 59, seeks beautiful, bright, non-smoking woman. Dutch treat, naturally"). Here is friendship in all shapes and sizes: from the Bible and classical literature (David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias), among literary figures (Goethe and Schiller, Lamb and Coleridge, Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore), even among animals (the friendship of Mole and Badger for Toad in The Wind in the Willows). There are interracial friendships (Queequeg and Ishmael, Huck Finn and Jim), friendships formed in concentration camps, young friends (Steerforth and David Copperfield), even the friendship we have for our pets. Thomas Mann, in "A Man and his Dog," writes of his dog Bashan--"Extraordinary creature So close a friend, and yet so remote"--and Alexander Pope, in his last known couplet, mourns the death of his pet Bounce. The ups and downs of friendship are also covered (Beethoven once wrote his friend Johann Hummel, "You are a false dog, and may the hangman do away with all false dogs," and the very next day wrote, "Come to me this afternoon.... Kisses from your Beethoven, also called dumpling"). And the editors conclude with a delightful potpourri of short sayings, such as the proverb, "it is easier to visit friends than to live with them," and Emerson's sage advice, "the only way to have a friend is to be one."
C.S. Lewis observed that friends rarely talk about their friendship. In The Oxford Book of Friendship, Enright and Rawlinson have found thousands of sources to do the talking for us, to question what we've taken for granted, and bring out in the open what we've always left unsaid.

The only paperback edition of the complete, definitive translation of one of the greatest novels in world literature. In 1989, the Bibliotheque de Pleiade published the final volume of the definitive original text of A la recherche du temps perdu. The Modern Library, In Search of Lost Time is the only complete translation into English based on the new French edition of Proust's masterpiece. Here D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation to create the peerless rendition of Proust for our day.

The definitive translation of a truly great French novel - Proust's beautiful, atmospheric story of memory and loss. This is the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, one of the greatest French novels of the twentieth century. Travelling back through time, the narrator tells the story of events long since past - his childhood happiness and sadness, and memories brought famously back to life by the taste of a madeleine. His family's friend and neighbour, the aristocratic Swann, weaves through the tale. We learn of Swann's passionate love affair with Odette, a jealous love that creates a model for the narrator's own relationships. All Proust's great themes begin here: time and memory, love and loss, art and the artistic vocation. THE ACCLAIMED FULLY REVISED EDITION OF THE SCOTT MONCRIEFF AND KILMARTIN TRANSLATION The best translation available: 'A really major, significant achievement, and one that you should put on your Christmas list immediately' Guardian VINTAGE FRENCH CLASSICS - six masterpieces of French fiction in collectable editions.

Can we truly know the one we love? In this painfully candid book Marcel Proust looks straight into the green eye of every lover's jealous struggle. He broods on why we are driven to try possess one another, how jealousy can outlive death, and whether we can ever reclaim those careless days of first love. There is no greater chronicler of jealousy's darkest fears and destructive suspicions than Proust. Selected from the book In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world's greatest writers on the experiences that make us human Also in the Vintage Minis series: Desire by Haruki Murakami Eating by Nigella Lawson Home by Salman Rushdie Babies by Anne Enright

In Swann’s Way, the themes of Proust’s masterpiece are introduced, and the narrator’s childhood in Paris and Combray is recalled, most memorably in the evocation of the famous maternal good-night kiss. The recollection of the narrator’s love for Swann’s daughter Gilberte leads to an account of Swann’s passion for Odette and the rise of the nouveaux riches Verdurins.

For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartin’s acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989).

A new, definitive text of Marcel Proust's novel was published by the Biblioth-que de la Pl-iade in 1989. for the present six-volume edition, D. J. Enright has further revised Terence Kilmartin's acclaimed revision of C. K. Scott Moncrieff's translation, and has incorporated significant new material. As a result, Proust's masterpiece emerges with renewed freshness and authority in this unassailable translation. Each volume contains notes, addenda and synopses, and the six and final volume also includes a Guide to the complete work

Translated by Scott Moncrieff and Kimartin, this is an updated and revised edition of Volume Four of Proust's "In Search of Lost Time". It contains notes, addenda and synopses.

Part of Proust's "In Search of Lost Time", this work is an updated and revised edition of the Scott Moncrieff and Kilmartin translation of "Within a Budding Grove". Notes, addenda and synopses are included.

Volume Five of Proust's work, "In Search of Lost Time". Translated by Scott Moncrieff and Kilmartin, this revised and updated edition contains notes, addenda and synopses.

The inescapable reality of death has given rise to much of literature's most profound and moving work. D. J. Enright's wonderfully eclectic selection presents the words of poet and novelist, scientist and philosopher, mystic and sceptic. And alongside these 'professional' writers, he allows the voices of ordinary people to be heard; for this is a subject on which there are no real experts and wisdom lies in many unexpected places.

This translation - by Scott Moncrieff and Kilmartin - of "The Guermantes Way" has been updated and revised. Part of Proust's work entitled "In Search of Lost Time", it contains notes, addenda and synopses.

Containing Volume Six of "In Search of Lost Time", this revised and updated edition contains a guide to Proust, notes, addenda and synopses. It is translated by Scott Moncrieff and Kilmartin.