Editing Marcel Proust (section)

==''In Search of Lost Time''==
{{Main|In Search of Lost Time}}

Begun in 1909, when Proust was 38 years old, ''À la recherche du temps perdu'' consists of seven volumes totaling around 3,200 pages (about 4,300 in [[Modern Library|The Modern Library's]] translation) and featuring more than 2,000 characters. [[Graham Greene]] called Proust the "greatest novelist of the twentieth century, just as [[Leo Tolstoy|Tolstoy]] was of the nineteenth"<ref>{{Cite book|title=Marcel Proust, a life|last=White|first=Edmund|publisher=Penguin|year=1999|isbn=9780143114987|pages=2}}</ref> and [[W. Somerset Maugham]] called the novel the "greatest fiction to date".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Patrick |title=Marcel Proust's Search for Lost Time: A Reader's Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past |date=2009 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday |isbn=978-0-307-47560-2 |page=5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l4C0I7dCktgC&pg=PA5 |language=en |access-date=2 March 2022 |archive-date=27 May 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240527075916/https://books.google.com/books?id=l4C0I7dCktgC&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref> [[André Gide]] was initially not so taken with his work. The first volume was refused by the publisher Gallimard on Gide's advice. He later wrote to Proust apologizing for his part in the refusal and calling it one of the most serious mistakes of his life.<ref>Tadié, J-Y. (Euan Cameron, trans.) ''Marcel Proust: A Life''. p. 611</ref>  Finally, the book was published at the author's expense by [[Éditions Grasset|Grasset]] and Proust paid critics to speak favorably about it.<ref>« Marcel Proust paid for reviews praising his work to go into newspapers », [[Agence France-Presse]] in ''[[The Guardian]]'', 28 septembre 2017, [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/28/marcel-proust-paid-for-reviews-praising-his-work-to-go-into-newspapers?CMP=share_btn_tw online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240527075901/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/28/marcel-proust-paid-for-reviews-praising-his-work-to-go-into-newspapers?CMP=share_btn_tw |date=27 May 2024 }}.</ref>

Proust died before he was able to complete his revision of the drafts and proofs of the final volumes, the last three of which were published posthumously and edited by his brother [[Robert Proust|Robert]]. The book was translated into English by [[C. K. Scott Moncrieff]], appearing under the title ''Remembrance of Things Past'' between 1922 and 1931. Scott Moncrieff translated volumes one through six of the seven volumes, dying before completing the last. This last volume was rendered by other translators at different times. When Scott Moncrieff's translation was later revised (first by [[Terence Kilmartin]], then by [[D. J. Enright]]) the title of the novel was changed to the more literal ''In Search of Lost Time''.

In 1995, Penguin undertook a fresh translation of the book by editor Christopher Prendergast and seven translators in three countries, based on the latest, most complete and authoritative French text. Its six volumes, comprising Proust's seven, were published in Britain under the [[Allen Lane]] imprint in 2002.

In 2023, Oxford University Press started releasing a new translation of the book by editors Brian Nelson and Adam Watt and five other translators. It will be published in seven volumes under the Oxford World's Classics imprint.