Editing In Search of Lost Time (section)

{{Short description|1913–1927 novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust}}
{{Redirect-multi|3|Remembrance of Things Past|À la recherche du temps perdu|Swann's Way|the play|Remembrance of Things Past (play){{!}}''Remembrance of Things Past'' (play)|the film|À la recherche du temps perdu (film)|other uses|Swans Way (disambiguation)}}
{{Infobox book
| name              = In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past)
| title_orig        = À la recherche du temps perdu
| image             = MS A la recherche du temps perdu.jpg
| caption           = A first [[galley proof]] of ''À la recherche du temps perdu: Du côté de chez Swann'' with Proust's handwritten corrections
| author            = [[Marcel Proust]]
| country           = [[French Third Republic|France]]
| language          = French
| translators       = [[C. K. Scott Moncrieff]]<br />[[Stephen Hudson]]<br />[[Terence Kilmartin]]<br />[[Lydia Davis]]<br />[[James Grieve (Australian translator)|James Grieve]]
| genre             = [[Modernist literature|Modernist]]
| set_in            = [[Paris]] and [[Normandy]], 1890s–1900s
| publisher         = [[Éditions Grasset|Grasset]] and [[Éditions Gallimard|Gallimard]]
| release_date      = 1913–1927
| english_release_date = 1922–1931
| pages             = 4,215
| notes             = Word count = 1,267,069
| native_wikisource = À_la_recherche_du_temps_perdu
| wikisource        = Remembrance of Things Past
| oclc              = 6159648
| dewey             = 843.912	
| congress          = PQ2631.R63
}}

'''''In Search of Lost Time''''' ({{langx|fr|'''À la recherche du temps perdu'''}}), first translated into English as '''''Remembrance of Things Past''''', and sometimes referred to in French as '''''La Recherche''''' (''The Search''), is a novel in seven volumes by French author [[Marcel Proust]]. This early twentieth-century work is his most prominent, known both for its length and its theme of [[involuntary memory]]. The most famous example of this is the "episode of the [[Madeleine (cake)|madeleine]]", which occurs early in the first volume.

The novel gained fame in English through translations by [[C. K. Scott Moncrieff]] and [[Terence Kilmartin]] and was known in the Anglosphere as ''Remembrance of Things Past''. The title ''In Search of Lost Time'', a literal rendering of the French, became ascendant after [[D. J. Enright]] adopted it for his revised translation published in 1992.<ref name=P>{{cite web|work=[[The Public Domain Review]]|url=https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/lost-in-translation-proust-and-scott-moncrieff/|title=Lost in Translation: Proust and Scott Moncrieff|first1= William C.|last1=Carter|date=November 13, 2013}}</ref>

''In Search of Lost Time'' follows the narrator's recollections of childhood and experiences into adulthood in late 19th-century and early 20th-century [[High society (social class)|high-society]] France. Proust began to shape the novel in 1909; he continued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. Proust established the structure early on, but even after volumes were initially finished, he continued to add new material and edited one volume after another for publication. The last three of the seven volumes contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages, as they existed only in draft form at the time of Proust's death. His brother Robert oversaw editing and publication of these parts.

The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927. Proust paid to publish the first volume (with [[Éditions Grasset]]) after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand. Many of its ideas, [[Motif (literature)|motifs]] and scenes were anticipated in Proust's [[unfinished work|unfinished]] novel, ''[[Jean Santeuil]]'' (1896–1899), though the perspective and treatment there are different, and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, ''[[Contre Sainte-Beuve]]'' (1908–09).

The novel had great influence on [[20th century in literature|twentieth-century literature]]; some writers have sought to emulate it, others to [[parody]] it. For the centenary of the French publication of the novel's first volume, American author [[Edmund White]] pronounced ''In Search of Lost Time'' "the most respected novel of the twentieth century".<ref>Edmund White, "Proust the Passionate Reader", ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'' (April 4, 2013), p. 20.</ref>

It holds the Guinness World Record for longest novel.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-novel | title=Longest novel }}</ref>