PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION xxistories in Les Plaisirs et les Jours and Jean Santeuil, and of a few
points elsewhere, could not be made easy reading. But these
passages are only a few pages of the whole, I have done my best
to make them lucid and concise, and I can only ask the reader to
take the occasional rough with the smooth.
To avoid needless repetition-and also, I confess, to avoid
laying all my cards on the table before the game is finished-I
have postponed giving a full bibliography of the sources used,
together with detailed references for each statement, till the
second and final volume, which will appear in six years' time.
Occasionally, however, and usually in order to correct some
predecessor's misstatement, I have given my sources in a foot-
note. I share the general reader's dislike of footnotes; but some-
times I have reluctantly relegated to the bottom of the page some
discussion of a point of detail which would have interrupted the
main narrative; and it seemed imperative to give references (to the
standard Pltfiade edition of the original text in three volumes) on
each occasion when Proust introduced material from his life in
particular passages of his novel. All translations from the French
are my own.
I had already made my researches into the dating of Proust's
letters and the originals of his characters before the appearance
of those two monumental works, Professor Philip Kolb's La
Correspondance de Marcel Proust (1949) and Antoine Adam's Le
Roman de Proust et Ie probleme des cleft (Revue des Sciences
humaines, jan.-mars 19)2, pp. 49-90). I have added to, re-examined
and sometime$ differed from their conclusions; but my debt to
them, though limited, is great, and I acknowledge it with admira-
tion and gratitude. In Chapters 2 and 3, along with other sources
including my own visit to Illiers in September 1950, I have
consulted P. L. Larcher's exquisite Le Parfum de Comhray (1945).
My chapter on Ruskin is independent of Jean Autret's L'Influence
de Ruskin sur la vie, les idees et l'ceuvre de Marcel Proust (1955),
but I have made some use of his views on the extent of Proust's
first-hand knowledge of Ruskin, Turner and Giotto. In Chapter
I2 I have had the benefit of Professor Kolb's description of the
original manuscript of Jean Santeuil, thanks to the kindness of
Mr Miron Grindea, editor of Adam, who showed me the advance
proofs of Professor Kolb's article in the special Proust number of
his magazine.