Seven works in eleven volumes, all first English language editions. Each volume in original blue cloth lettered in gilt, in original cream printed dustwrappers, apart from Cities of the Plain which is in its original slipcase, having not been issued in dustwrappers. Cities of the Plain is number 1943 of 2230 sets. Time Regained is one of 100 not for sale copies (from a total edition of 1350) and is inscribed at length by the books' translator, Sidney Schiff, to the noted French literary critic Ramon Fernandez. A fine set in very good to near fine dustwrappers, spines slightly tanned with light wear or the occasional small chip to the spine ends or corners, but all entirely unrestored. A truly exceptional set and very rare in such a complete state.

A superb set of the English translation of Proust's magnum opus, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, widely regarded as the twentieth century's most influential, even definitive, novel. It was written as and is contrived to be read as a single novel, yet is made up of seven self-contained works. Proust began working in earnest on the work in 1909 completing most of it in outline before the publication of the first instalment in 1913. By the time of his death from pneumonia in 1922, he had fully completed all but a few passages of the work and the episodes continued appearing, to ever greater acclaim, until their conclusion in 1927.
The novel's fame and influence in England is mainly due to the translation made by Charles Scott Moncrieff, the first volume being issued a few months before Proust's death in 1922 and continuing until Moncrieff's own death in 1930, by which time he was part way through translating the final volume, which was completed by Syndey Schiff under the pseudonym, Stephen Hudson. Moncrieff's choice of series title, rather than the more literal "In Search of Lost Time" which the novel is now often referred to as, was taken from the second line of Shakespeare's Sonnet no. 30.
The work's influence on modernism and the development of the novel is hard to overstate: many techniques which were to become a staple of the twentieth century, such as the extensive use of the interior monologue or the stream of consciousness style have their origins in this work.
Between approximately 1000 and 2500 copies of each of the volumes of the translation were issued, making complete sets uncommon and almost inevitably found without dustwrappers. Sets in dustwrappers, particularly unrestored and so well preserved are very rare indeed.

Stock ID: 42885