Le Côté de Guermantes I
Presentation copy inscribed by Marcel Proust to the journalist, critic and poet Fernand Divoire:
“À Monsieur Fernand Divoire, sympathique hommage, Marcel Proust.”
Divoire was an active figure in Parisian literary life and a consistently sympathetic reader of Proust. In August 1920, shortly before the publication of Le Côté de Guermantes, Proust had responded to a literary survey Divoire was conducting for L’Intransigeant.
The first volume of Guermantes was the first installment of In Search of Lost Time to appear after Proust received the Prix Goncourt for Within a Budding Grove. It marks the narrator’s long-awaited entrance into the aristocratic world of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
A well-preserved copy, with the usual third-edition statement but bearing the correct first-edition publication date of August 17, 1920. This presentation copy was recorded as a previously unknown inscription in the Bulletin d’informations proustiennes (no. 51, 2021).