(Paris) The French editions Plon will reissue Marcel Proust’s correspondence in November for the first time in twenty years, launching a luxury collection for the occasion, they announced on Friday.
Posted at 9:43 a.m.
The five-volume box set is due out November 3, as the centenary of the author’s death approaches.
The print run is 2,000 copies, with an afterword by Proust’s biographer Jean-Yves Tadié and a facsimile of certain handwritten letters.
“This goldsmith’s work was published by Plon editions in 21 volumes between 1970 and 1993”, recalled the publishing house in a press release.
This monumental work was the life’s work of an American scholar, Philip Kolb, who patiently approached anyone he thought had letters from the writer. He died in 1992.
Supplemented with letters found since then, the new edition is presented by Thierry Laget, another Proust specialist who will also publish a beautiful book on Proust and the arts (Hazan editions) in October.
In addition to his novel cycle In Search of Lost Time, Proust was a prolific letter writer and much appreciated by his contemporaries. Philip Kolb had amassed over 5,000 letters, which spanned over 10,000 pages.
This correspondence enabled Plon to launch the La Prestigious collection, which later included the diary of the painter Eugène Delacroix and the correspondence of Queen Marie-Antoinette.