“IT IS A SOUL UNDER GUISE OF A BOOK”: PROUST’S A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU, VERY RARE FULL FIRST EDITION SET IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS, A FINE COPY

PROUST, Marcel. A la recherche du temps perdu. Paris: Gallimard, Nouvelle Revue Francaise, 1913-27. Thirteen volumes. Octavo, original paper wrappers, uncut, original glassine. Housed in five matching custom clamshell boxes.

First edition set of Proust’s masterpiece, exceptional copies in original wrappers, with the very rare first issue of the first volume, Du Côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way).

In a February 1908 letter Proust mentioned his intention to “start a rather long work.” Fourteen years and some two million words later, in February of 1922, he wrote, “A la recherche du temps perdu is scarcely beginning.” Proust died nine months later, still in the midst of revisions and additions. Of his masterwork he said, “I have tried to put all my philosophy into it, to make all my ‘music’ resonate.” In a contemporary review Maurice Rostand observed that Proust “comes to us speaking the language he alone speaks and which he has created himself to express his soul… and this masterpiece, at once so lucid and so mysterious, in which he has found the means to express what seems inexpressible, say what seems unsayable—it is a soul under guise of a book” (Hayman, 274, 489, 387).

Unable to find a publisher, Proust was forced to publish the first volume at his own expense with the publisher Bernard Grasset. Gallimard’s Nouvelle Revue Francaise, which had rejected the book on the basis of a hasty reading by Andre Gide, swiftly realized the error and agreed to publish the rest of the work. Traditionally translated Remembrance of Things Past, the complete work, which is largely autobiographical, consists of seven interrelated sections: Du Côté de chez Swann, A l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, Le Côté de Guermantes, Sodome et Gomorrhe, La Prisonnière, Albertine disparue and Le Temps retrouvé. All volumes here are first editions, with the first volume being the very rare first issue, with a date of 1913 on the front wrapper and 1914 on the title page, a printer’s slug between between the last two letters of the publisher’s name on the title page, and the colophon on the verso of page 523. The final eleven volumes are each of a limited edition, although the limitation sizes and numbers vary from volume to volume. Text in French.

Interiors fine, with only a bit of evidence of tape repair along front inner paper hinge of Swann’s Way. Fragile original wrappers and glassine in extraordinary condition, with almost no signs of wear. A beautiful copy.