Remembrance of Things Past

This novel sequence, published from 1913 to 1927 as A la recherche du temps perdu and long known in English under this title, is narrated by a man who tries to recover his life through involuntary memory. Childhood at Combray, Charles Swann's love for Odette, the narrator's attachment to Gilberte and later to Albertine, the salons of the Guermantes, and the circle around Charlus form the main strands. Parties, jealousy, illness, and the Dreyfus Affair occupy a society that ages as the narrator writes. The last movement returns to time and to the decision to make a book from what memory has stored. It is a single long novel in several parts, not a set of separate stories.

Full black artificial silk binding, decorated in red and gold with a design by Sally Lou Smith. Dark red endleaves. Black artificial-silk covered three-volume slipcase.