The memoirs of Ernest Forssgren (1894-1970), the young Swede who served as Marcel Proust's last valet, provide new insights into Proust's life and death. Previously, Forssgren's memoir has been published only in excerpts, in French, with serious omissions and alterations.
This book presents the complete text of the memoir, with an introduction and helpful annotations by the distinguished Proust scholar William C. Carter. Also included here is other new material: the inscriptions that Proust wrote for Forssgren's copy of "Swann's Way;" an important telegram that Proust sent Forssgren, which defines with greater precision the novelist's activities in the final months of his life; Forssgren's "Summary" of the first English biography of Proust, by George D. Painter, which provides many new details about Proust's last trip to Cabourg in 1914 and his attempts at seducing young men of the servant class; and the notes that Forssgren made in his copy of Painter's biography.

An authoritative new edition of the fourth volume in Marcel Proust's epic masterwork, In Search of Lost Time series Marcel Proust's monumental seven-part novel In Search of Lost Time is considered by many to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. The fourth volume, Sodom and Gomorrah, is notable for its pioneering discussion of homosexuality. After its publication, Colette wrote to Proust, "No one has written pages such as these on homosexuals, no one!" This edition is edited and annotated by noted Proust scholar William C. Carter, who endeavors to bring the classic C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation closer to the spirit and style of the original.

The foremost Proust scholar of our time offers a brilliantly revised and annotated edition of the first volume of the twentieth century's most acclaimed novel "Carter's revised edition . . . renews one's appreciation of Proust. . . . [His] slight but decisive emendations bring the reader closer than ever to the tenor of Proust's style and diction. . . . A magnificent and enduring achievement."-Choice One hundred years have passed since Marcel Proust published the first volume of what was to become a seven-volume masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. In the intervening century his famously compelling novel has never been out of print and has been translated into dozens of languages. English-language readers were fortunate to have an early and extraordinarily fine translation of the novel from Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff. With the passage of time, however, the need for corrections, revisions, and annotations to the Scott Montcrieff translation has become apparent.Esteemed Proust scholar William C. Carter celebrates the publication centennial of Swann's Way with a new, more accurate and illuminating edition of the first volume of In Search of Lost Time. Carter corrects previous translating missteps to bring readers closer to Proust's intentions while also providing enlightening notes to clarify biographical, historical, and social contexts. Presented in a reader-friendly format alongside the text, these annotations will enrich and deepen the experience of Proust's novel, immersing readers in the world of an unsurpassed literary genius.

An authoritative new edition of Marcel Proust's The Captive and The Fugitive, published together as the fifth volume of his epic masterwork, In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust's monumental seven-part novel In Search of Lost Time is considered by many to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. The Captive and The Fugitive, the fifth and sixth volumes of Proust's masterpiece, contain some of literature's most beautiful meditations on art, music, desire, jealousy, love and loss, grieving and forgetting. In this work, Proust continues his vast satirical fresco of high society in France just prior to the outbreak of World War I. These volumes and the following volume were published posthumously, as Proust died when he was approximately one-third of the way through correcting the proofs for The Captive.The Fugitive was also the last volume translated by Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff, who did not live to finish his enormous task. This edition of the two, published together as the fifth volume, is edited and annotated by noted Proust scholar William C. Carter, who endeavors to bring the classic C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation closer to the spirit and style of the original.

An authoritative new edition of the third volume in Marcel Proust's epic masterwork, In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust's monumental seven-part novel In Search of Lost Time is considered by many to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. This edition of volume three, The Guermantes Way, is edited and annotated by noted Proust scholar William C. Carter, who endeavors to bring the classic C. K. Scott Moncrieff translation closer to the spirit and style of the author's original text. Continuing the story begun in Swann's Way and continued in In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, The Guermantes Way follows Proust's young protagonist as he advances through aristocratic French society in late-nineteenth-century Paris. A departure from the intimacy of the sprawling novel's previous two installments, part three unfolds against a colorful backdrop of Parisian life, moving from literary salon to opulent social gathering to provide a biting and satirical commentary on culture, human foibles, the ways of the world, and the irretrievable loss of time.

The extraordinary life and times of Marcel Proust, one of the greatest literary voices of the twentieth century, by "Proust's definitive biographer" (Harold Bloom) Based on a wealth of letters, memoirs, workbooks, and manuscripts unavailable before, the book examines Proust's character and development as an artist, the glittering Parisian world of which he was a part, and the passions that enabled him to write his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time. "Serious, thoughtful, well-balanced, well-informed. . . . Carter is the kind of reader Proust hoped for, one who understands that a great work compels us to become better readers of ourselves."-Victor Brombert, Los Angeles Times "An impeccably researched and well-paced narrative that brings vividly and credibly to life not only the writer himself but also the changing world he knew."-Roger Pearson, New York Times Book Review Named a Notable Book of 2000 by the New York Times Book Review

The acclaimed Proust biographer William Carter portrays Proust's amorous adventures and misadventures from adolescence through his adult years, supplying where appropriate Proust's own sensitive, intelligent, and often disillusioned observations about love and sexuality. Proust is revealed as a man agonizingly caught between the constant fear of public exposure as a homosexual and the need to find and express love. In telling the story of Proust in love, Carter also shows how the author's experiences became major themes in his novel In Search of Lost Time. Carter discusses Proust's adolescent sexual experiences, his disastrous brothel visit to cure homosexual inclinations, and his first great loves. He also addresses the duel Proust fought with the journalist Jean Lorrain after he alluded to Proust's homosexuality in print, his flirtations with respectable women and high-class prostitutes, and his affairs with young men of the servant class. With new revelations about Proust's love life and a gallery of photographs, the book provides an unprecedented glimpse of Proust's gay Paris.

Shelby Foote once said that he did not know of anything he had learned about the writing of novels that couldn't also be applied to the writing of history. In his development, the merging of these special talents has made Foote almost unique in the history of American literature, for few other great modern authors have proved to be master storytellers in both fiction and historical narrative.

In "Conversations with Shelby Foote," this novelist-historian expresses penetrating and often humorous remarks about major modern writers as well as about the classical writers of fiction, plays, poetry, and historical narrative. In one interview Foote explains how Homer's "Iliad" and Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" were his chief models for writing his history of the Civil War.

Foote recounts also what it was like to grow up in a small Mississippi town in the first half of the twentieth century and tells how his observations of African Americans and whites of all classes influenced his fiction and history writing.

These eighteen interviews spanning thirty-seven years not only detail Shelby Foote's exploration of southern history, race relations, and the role of literature in the formation and preservation of a culture but also reveal his evolution into a great narrative artist.