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(1983), now published together with Time Regained in the Vintage edition of the novel, offers indexes of fictional characters; historical persons; places; and, usefully, themes, all with brief descriptions and fully cross-referenced. This makes tracking down particular passages easier and reminds flagging memories of relations and connections that may have grown fuzzy over time. In French, the fourth volume of the Pléiade edition has similar indexes which make navigating the text easier, with the additional benefit of listing all the works of art referred to in the novel. Readers will find much to enrich and enliven their reading in David Ellison’s recent A Reader’s Guide to Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’ (2010), in which he works through the novel volume by volume. Further help is at hand in the shape of the invaluable Dictionnaire Marcel Proust (2004), an amazing mine of information, with entries by specialists on topics ranging from motifs and characters in the Search, to biographical details of Proust’s acquaintances and contemporaries, assessments of individual volumes and summaries of critical responses.

Beyond the solace of these reference works lies the daunting, varied terrain of Proust criticism. An excellent starting point is the Cambridge Companion to Proust (2001) edited by the late Richard Bales: here, fourteen essays from leading scholars offer appraisal, critique and analysis of a wide range of issues, from the novel’s socio-cultural context to the role of the unconscious; comedy; the fine arts; and the unexpected pleasures of Proustian brevitas. Read together, these essays offer a solid grounding for any student of the novel; each one opens on to a whole sub-field of criticism, and there is a good bibliography.

Jean-Yves Tadié’s Proust: le dossier (1983, various reprints) is still an extremely valuable resource from the general editor of the ‘definitive’ Pléiade text and author of the superlative French life of the author. Tadié offers a general overview of Proust’s novel, the context of its production and its major preoccupations, before giving brief analyses of Proust’s writings and the broad trends in the reception of the Search. Tadié’s immense learning and familiarity with all things Proustian have more recently been distilled into a much shorter volume, whose grand title, Proust: la cathédrale du temps [Proust: the Cathedral of Time] (1999) rather belies its diminutive dimensions: in just over 100 pages, Tadié weaves a narrative of the life and work around beautiful illustrations of the places and people of Proust’s life, as well as photographs of the fascinating excesses of the manuscripts and corrected typescripts In a similar vein and on a similar scale, Mary Ann Caws’ excellent Marcel Proust (2003), in the ‘Overlook Illustrated Lives’ series, gives a wonderful sense of the colourful influences and inspirations that contributed to the production of the Search, supported by plentiful illustrations of works of art that Proust admired and that feature in the Search.

There are many options open to readers wishing to move beyond relatively brief introductory works. The historically minded should stop first at Marcel Proust: The Critical Heritage, edited by Leighton Hodson (1989), which features, in English translation, reviews and responses to Proust’s work, from Les Plaisirs et les jours through to excerpts of the first critical studies of the Search from the 1930s. It contains a good number of pieces from the ‘Hommage à Marcel Proust’ number of the Nouvelle Revue Française that appeared in January 1923, including reflections from contemporary authors and critics, such as Gide, Thibaudet, Joseph Conrad and Ernst-Robert Curtius

Early studies

Many responses to the Search as it first appeared recorded timid admiration tempered by scepticism or wariness to praise too highly a work whose ultimate direction and endpoint were far from clear. A number of insightful, early studies stand out, however, written very shortly after the novel’s publication was completed and which still offer substantial