Swann's Way

Swann's Way is the first and best-known part of one of the landmarks of world literature, Marcel Proust's continuous novel Remembrance of Things Past.  This translation is Terence Kilmartin's 1981 reworking of the original C.K. Scott Moncrieff English translation, taking into account the 1954 Bibliothèque de la Pléiade edition derived by Pierre Clarac and André Ferré.

A la recherche du temps perdu was originally published in eight parts, the titles and dates of which were: I. Du côté de chez Swann (1913), published in English as Swann's Way; II. A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (1919), awarded the Prix Goncourt in the year of publication and translated in English as Within a Budding Grove; III. Le côté de Guermantes I (1920); IV. Le côté de Guermantes II, both translated in English as The Guermantes Way; V. Sodom et Gomorrhe I (1921); VI. Sodom et Gomorrhe II (1922), both translated in English as Cities of the Plain; VI. La prisonnière (1923), translated in English as The Captive; VII. Albertine disparue (1925), translated in English as The Sweet Cheat Gone and later as The Fugitive; and VIII. Le temps retrouvé (1927), translated in English as Time Regained.  

In 1954 a text of A la recherche du temps perdu derived by Pierre Clarac and André Ferré from holograph and other sources was published in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Gallimard, Paris).  Based on extensive study of the author's papers, it restored passages previously omitted and made numerous small but often significant changes throughout the eight books.  In the late 1950s the last book, titled in English Time Regained, was translated into English for the first time, using  the Pléiade edition, by Andreas Mayor, who also made notes for a revision of the entire English text, but unfortunately died before he could undertake the work.

In 1981, the distinguished French scholar Terence Kilmartin completed the task, preserving as much as possible of the C.K. Scott-Moncrieff translation--which had become Proust for many English-speaking readers--but correcting errors and confusions as well as including what was left out of earlier editions.  

The remaining volumes of Proust's masterwork are also available from Vintage books in a three-volume paperback edition.  Volume I includes Swann's Way and Within a Budding Grove.  Volume II contains The Guermantes Way and Cities of the Plain.  Volume III contains The Captive, The Fugitive, and Time Regained.