Marcel Proust (1871–1922) was a French novelist best known for his three thousand–page masterpiece In Search of Lost Time—also translated as Remembrance of Things Past—a pseudo-autobiographical novel told mostly in a stream-of-consciousness style. He was active in Parisian high society during the latter decades of the nineteenth century, and he was welcomed in the most fashionable salons of his day. Toward the end of the 1890s, Proust began to withdraw from society, and although never entirely reclusive, he lapsed further into his lifelong tendency to sleep during the day and work at night. He was plagued by terror of his own death and was especially afraid that it would come before he could complete his novel. The first volume came out in 1913, and Proust continued to work on his masterpiece right up until his death at the age of fifty-one. Today he is recognized as one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century.
