Marcel Proust

William C. Carter, professor emeritus of French at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is the author of "Proust in Love", and a new, fully annotated edition of Proust's classic, "Swann's Way".

"This new biography gains interest and density as it follows the delicate child, carried in his mother's womb during the hardships and hazards of the 1870-71 Prussian siege of Paris, through a pampered childhood and self-indulgent youth into the bedridden, drug-addled adulthood that produced a heroically long and intricate masterpiece. It is an inspiring story – a life justified in the majestic retelling of that life, in a novel whose climax is the vision of itself, as its hero arrives at the blessed condition of an author" – John Updike, New Yorker

"William Carter's judicious and comprehensive biography tells a story whose structure closely corresponds with its subject's masterpiece" – Lucy Hughes-Hallet, Sunday Times

"A new biography which helps to explain how someone considered by his contemporaries to be a talented but frivolous dilettante came to produce what is arguable the major novel of the 20th century" – The Sunday Telegraph

"An impeccably researched and well-paced narrative that brings vividly and credibly to life not only the writer himself but also the changing world he knew" – Roger Pearson, New York Times Book Review

"William C. Carter is Proust's definitive biographer" – Harold Bloom