The "Overlook Illustrated Lives" series offers visual literary biographies, informatively written by leading experts, accompanied by over a hundred photographs and illustrations, some unpublished and rarely seen, that bring to life the author's world. In this volume, Mary Ann Caws captures the details of Marcel Proust's life, from his daily routines to the elite social circle that fascinated his youth, and has hand chosen photos and illustrations to enable readers to share the celebrated author's sight - and how others saw him. The more than 100 illustrations, some previously unpublished, range far and wide: Proust's favorite paintings by Vermeer, Manet, Monet, Moreau, Rembrandt, Whistler and others; portraits of the people he was close to; sources for his fictional characterizations of Sarah Bernhardt, Charles Haas, Robert de Montesquiou, Rejane, Emile Zola, Alfred Dreyfuss, and others; and copious illustrations of the Ballets Russes Proust attended with such enthusiasm, scores of the music he loved, some of his manuscripts, his own sketches, and the places dear to him and central to the great novel that was his life's work. Coinciding with the publication of the first all-new English translation of Proust's great work in more than seventy years, this volume celebrates the combination of solitary genius and passionate investigator of social custom that has made the author an object of fascination to generations of readers.