In Search of Lost Time

Published in seven parts from 1913 to 1927, this novel follows an unnamed narrator from a childhood at Combray through the salons, love affairs, and social climbs of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century France. Involuntary memory, beginning with a taste that recalls another time, organises the book. Swann's love for Odette, the narrator's obsession with Gilberte and later Albertine, the Guermantes world, and the decline of that society through the Dreyfus Affair and the war form the long plot. Jealousy, habit, art, and time itself are the subjects. It is a single novel of recollection and social anatomy, not a set of detachable sketches.

Bound in dark blue cloth, Volumes 2, 4 and 6 bound in light blue cloth, each volume printed with a design and the volume number prominent on the spine.