Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust was born in Paris in 1871. His family belonged to the wealthy upper middle class, and Marcel began frequenting aristocratic salons at a young age. Leading the life of a society dilettante, he met numerous artists and writers. He wrote articles, poems, and short stories (collected as Les Plaisirs et les Jours), as well as pastiches and essays (collected as Pastiches et Mélanges) and translated John Ruskin's Bible of Amiens. He then went on to write novels. A sufferer of asthma, he died from poorly-treated Bronchitis in 1922; he is buried in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris (Division 85).