How Marcel Proust got good reviews… he wrote them himself

HE IS considered one of the greatest French authors of the 20th century, but Marcel Proust also employed his literary skills to write glowing newspaper reviews of his own work.

The novelist secretly paid for them to be published in Le Figaro and other newspapers. He wrote the reviews in longhand and had them typed by his publisher “so there is no trace of my handwriting” to connect him with “the money that will change hands”.

The letters to his editor, Louis Brun, demonstrate a flair for publicity that would have been the envy of many a modern advertising executive.

Unconstrained by modesty, Proust described Swann’s Way as a “little masterpiece” which “like a gust of wind blows away the soporific vapours” of other contemporary writing.

Comparing himself to Dickens, he proclaimed: “What Monsieur Proust sees and feels is completely original.” His writing was “almost too luminous for the eye.”

The letters came to light with a rare early copy of Swann’s Way, the first volume of his epic work, Remembrance of Things Past (also known as In Search of Lost Time), published in France between 1913 and 1927. It is expected to fetch about half a million euros (£441,000) when it is auctioned with the letters at Sotheby’s in Paris next month.

His letters also reveal his fury at Le Figaro for editing out a reference to “the eminent Marcel Proust”.