Proust, Marcel

Marcel Proust was born in Paris in 1871 into a bourgeois and educated family. He suffered from asthma from an early age. After graduating in literature from the Sorbonne, he indulged in a distinguished social life. The death of his father in 1903 and the loss of his mother shortly afterwards hit him hard. Proust then led a secluded life and began to work on his literary oeuvre, the first volume of which, Du côté de chez Swann, appeared in 1913. In 1919, he received the Prix Goncourt for the sequel À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. In the three years before his death, Marcel Proust wrote the five volumes that would make up À la recherche du temps perdu. He died on 18 November 1922 as a consequence of bronchitis.