Marcel Proust // Jean Santeuil

Preface by André Maurois. Translation from the French by Gerard Hopkins of the 1952 book Jean Santeuil (Gallimard).

Proust (1871–1922) wrote Jean Santeuil between 1896 and 1899, well before his masterpiece La Recherche (In Search of Lost Time), with which it shares many themes.

Unfinished and unmistakably autobiographical, the book was published some thirty years after his death. Its first edition resulted from Bernard de Fallois’s painstaking work sorting and transcribing hundreds of scattered manuscript pages that had been left in storage, and in no particular order.

Subsequent editions — notably the 1971 Pléiade (Gallimard) volume — proposed a different organization of the material, removing some of de Fallois’s editorial transitions and reshaping the chapter structure.

Jean Santeuil is a fascinating read, whether before or after La Recherche: it offers a vivid glimpse into the long creative process Proust went through.

A fine copy, with a dust jacket in near-fine condition.