The last three of the seven volumes contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages as they existed in draft form at the death of the author the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert. Proust established the structure early on, but even after volumes were initially finished he kept adding new material, and edited one volume after another for publication.

Proust continued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. 'In Search of Lost Time' is a novel in seven volumes. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. But for most readers it is the characters of the novel who loom the largest: Swann and Odette, Monsieur de Charlus, Morel, the Duchesse de Guermantes, Françoise, Saint-Loup and so many others - Giants, as the author calls them, immersed in Time. Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. Somerset Maugham 'Proust is the greatest novelist of the 20th century.' -Graham Greene On the surface a traditional 'Bildungsroman' describing the narrators journey of self-discovery, this huge and complex book is also a panoramic and richly comic portrait of France in the authors lifetime, and a profound meditation on the nature of art, love, time, memory and death. Oh if I could write like that!' -Virginia Woolf 'The greatest fiction to date.' -W. 'In Search of Lost Time is widely recognized as the major novel of the twentieth century.' -Harold Bloom 'At once the last great classic of French epic prose tradition and the towering precursor of the nouveau roman.' -Bengt Holmqvist 'Proust so titillates my own desire for expression that I can hardly set out the sentence.

In search of lost time set