Swann’s Way, Remembrance of Things Past, Vol 1, Marcel Proust

Swann’s Way (Du côté de chez Swann, sometimes translated as The Way by Swann’s), published in 1913, was rejected by a number of publishers, including Fasquelle, Ollendorff, and the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF).

André Gide was famously given the manuscript to read to advise the NRF on publication and, leafing through the seemingly endless collection of memories and philosophizing or melancholic episodes, came across a few minor syntactic errors, which made him decide to turn the work down in his audit. Proust eventually arranged with the publisher Grasset to pay the cost of publication himself.

When published, the book was advertised as the first of a three-volume novel (Bouillaguet and Rogers, 316–7). Du côté de chez Swann is divided into four parts: “Combray I” (sometimes referred to in English as the “Overture”), “Combray II”, “Un Amour de Swann” (“Swann in Love”), and “Noms de pays: le nom” (“Names of places: the name”).

A third-person novella within Du côté de chez Swann, “Un Amour de Swann” is sometimes published as a volume by itself.

As it forms the self-contained story of Charles Swann’s love affair with Odette de Crécy and is relatively short, it is generally considered a good introduction to the work and is often a set text in French schools.

“Combray I” is similarly excerpted; it ends with the famous madeleine cake episode, introducing the theme of involuntary memory. In early 1914 Gide, who had been involved in the NRF’s rejection of the book, wrote to Proust to apologize and to offer congratulations on the novel:

For several days I have been unable to put your book down … The rejection of this book will remain the most serious mistake ever made by the NRF and, since I bear the shame of being very much responsible for it, one of the most stinging and remorseful regrets of my life (Tadié, 611).

Gallimard (the publishing arm of the NRF) offered to publish the remaining volumes, but Proust chose to stay with Grasset.