Selected Letters: 1880-1903

This third volume of Proust's letters covers the period when the writer was at the height of his powers, though he remained in bed in his cork-lined room for six and a half days a week as his asthma worsened. "Du Cote de chez Swann", the first volume of his extraordinary novel, was published (at his own expense, following rejection by three publishers). But his literary success was overshadowed by the death of the great love of his life, his chauffeur and secretary Alfred Agostinelli, on whom his fictional Albertine was partly modelled. Then came the Great War and, as he suffered the deaths of so many of his friends, the invalid Proust devoted himself to his own battle: the race to complete his huge novel before he died.