Nature and extent of the documents
The bibliographic file compiled by Philip Kolb consists of approximately 1300 slips of paper which represent both references to works written by Proust and references to works about Proust. The file covers the years 1884-1991 (see the table below).
| Works by Proust | Works about Proust | |
|---|---|---|
| before 1922 | -articles, translations, prefaces, interviews and literary texts written by Proust and published during his lifetime. | -works mentioning, citing or studying Proust or his writings, and published during his lifetime. These include monographs and periodicals, both those published in France and in other countries. |
| after 1922 | -letters and articles published after Proust’s death (1922-1991).
-literary works: the first publication of the posthumous parts of À la Recherche , and the prepublication of excerpts (1922-27). |
-from November 19, 1922 to January 1, 1923: published tributes to Proust. |
This series of documents is currently the most complete bibliographic resource for works by and about Proust which were published during his lifetime. This is also true for the posthumous publications of his letters, and for articles which were either unpublished during his lifetime or which were published during his lifetime but were “rediscovered” after his death.
The bibliographic documents do not include references to later republications of the novel, translations of the novel, or publications of Proust’s early drafts of the novel. Concerning critical studies of Proust’s works, Philip Kolb kept his bibliographic references current into the 1960’s. Afterwards, when the number of references to Proust exploded, he kept records of those which were particularly important to his own work.
Interpreting the documents
Each document contains a bibliographic reference which includes the name of the author, the title of the article, the title of the periodical or monograph, and the date of publication.
Where the author’s name is a pseudonym or is not given, the real name is added in brackets [ ] if it was known to Philip Kolb.
Where Proust is cited as the author of letters contained in an article or monograph, his name is given in parentheses after the name of the primary author, eg.:
Dreyfus, Robert, (Proust, Marcel), Souvenirs sur Marcel Proust .
Some documents also include excerpts from the referenced work or a brief summary of it, comments by Philip Kolb, secondary references to other texts, or information about the availablility of the work.
We have attempted to make the documents as legible as possible by expanding the abbreviations used by Kolb and by making other minor changes for the purposes of clarity. We have added explanatory notes where we have believed them to be useful. These notes are typographically distinguished from Kolb’s text and are signed with the initials of their authors:
CS Caroline Szylowicz
VG Virginie Greene
FL Françoise Leriche
PR Patrick Reidenbaugh