Marcel Proust, an English Tribute

These essays were written in the immediate aftermath of Proust's death in 1922, capturing the first wave of critical assessment from his contemporaries. The contributors, including Joseph Conrad, Arnold Bennett, Compton Mackenzie, and fifteen other notable writers, had either known Proust personally or witnessed his literary ascent in Paris. This is not distant academic criticism but intimate testimony from within Proust's literary circle, personal recollections, assessments of his revolutionary technique, and grief from friends who had watched him work. The collection offers a rare window into how the earliest readers understood In Search of Lost Time: as a radical departure in the treatment of memory and time that was still being fully grasped. For scholars of early twentieth-century literature, this serves as invaluable primary documentation of how Proust's legacy was first constructed.