French Literature

This French writer was born in Paris, on July 10, 1871 to a family that was well-off financially and that moved in the refined and exclusive circles of high society. His father was a famous doctor and his mother came from a Jewish family of the Alsace region. Even as a young boy, Proust was of weak health, suffering from asthma.

Proust received an excellent education and from a very early age gave signs of possessing great intelligence and sensibility. Having studied Law at the Sorbonne, he later gave up his studies to begin mingling in Paris' fashionable society and devote himself to writing. At the age of 35, his ill health took a turn for the worse when he became a chronic invalid, shutting himself up in his cork-lined room and becoming a recluse for the rest of his life.

It was during this time that he wrote his masterpiece, "Remembrance of Things Past" ("À la recherche du temps perdu"), a piece of literature that is regarded as one of the greatest not only in French Literature, but world literature as a whole.

The importance of Proust's work lies in the detailed psychological analysis that he makes of each of his characters. He died in Paris, in 1922.