Valentin Louis Georges Eugene Marcel Proust (July 10, 1871 – November 18, 1922) was a French author best known for his monumental novel A la recherché du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). He was born and raised in the 16^th arrondisement of Paris just after the upheaval of the Paris Commune. His father, a Catholic, was a prominent pathologist and epidemiologist; his mother was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family.  Marcel was baptized and raised Catholic but did not practice the faith. He was an asthmatic child whose schooling was frequently disrupted by illness. He spent many long holidays in the village of Illiers, the model for Cordray. Nevertheless, he spent a year in the French army as a young man and then immersed himself in the salons of Paris and wrote literary articles and reviews. He was very close to his mother and lived at his parents’ apartment until after their deaths. He eventually found a volunteer position at Bibilotheque Mazarine but never worked, obtaining a sick leave that lasted several years. His early work includes Les Plaisirs du Jours (1896), a collection of short pieces; a novel, Jean Auteil, which he abandoned in 1899 and was published posthumously in 1952; and two translations of works by Ruskin, a key influence, which were undertaken with the help of his mother and the English cousin of a friend and well received. He started on his masterwork in 1909 at age 38 and produced seven volumes totaling 3,200 pages and containing over 2,000 characters. The revisions of the last three volumes were incomplete at the time of his death in 1922 and were edited and published by his brother Robert.