The Seventy-Five Folios and Other Unpublished Manuscripts

The recently discovered early manuscripts of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time offer a glimpse into his emerging genius and the creation of his masterpiece. The manuscripts, hidden among Bernard de Fallois's private papers, were found upon his death in 2018. The Seventy-Five Folios and Other Unpublished Manuscripts presents these folios in English for the first time, with extensive commentary and notes by Proust scholar Nathalie Mauriac Dyer. The folios contain early versions of six episodes included in the novel, revealing the autobiographical extent of Proust's writing and his artistic evolution.

Format: Hardback
Length: 360 pages
Publication date: 26 May 2023
Publisher: Harvard University Press

The recently discovered early manuscripts of the twentieth century's most towering literary figure offer uncanny glimpses of his emerging genius and the creation of his masterpiece.

One of the most significant literary events of the century, the discovery of manuscript pages containing early drafts of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time put an end to a decades-long search for the Proustian grail. The Paris publisher Bernard de Fallois claimed to have viewed the folios, but doubts about their existence emerged when none appeared in the Proust manuscripts bequeathed to the Bibliothèque Nationale in 1962. The texts had in fact been hidden among Fallois' private papers, where they were found upon his death in 2018.

The Seventy-Five Folios and Other Unpublished Manuscripts presents these folios here for the first time in English, along with seventeen other brief unpublished texts. Extensive commentary and notes by the Proust scholar Nathalie Mauriac Dyer offer insightful critical analysis.

Characterized by Fallois as the "precious guide" to understanding Proust's masterpiece, the folios contain early versions of six episodes included in the novel. Readers glimpse what Proust's biographer Jean-Yves Tadié describes as the "sacred moment" when the great work burst forth for the first time. The folios reveal the autobiographical extent of Proust's writing, with traces of his family life scattered throughout. Before the existence of Charles Swann, for example, we find a narrator named Marcel, a testament to what one scholar has called "the gradual transformation of lived experience into (auto)fiction in Proust's elaboration of the novel."

Like a painter's sketches and a composer's holographs, Proust's folios tell a story of artistic creation, with each page offering a glimpse into the mind of the master. The discovery of these manuscripts has opened up a new window into the world of Proust, allowing readers to experience his genius in a way that has never been possible before.

Weight: 670g
Dimension: 240 x 160 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780674271012