Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

Marcel Proust was born in the Paris suburb of Auteuil. He suffered from chronic asthma from age nine. In 1882, he began attending the Lycée Condorcet, but his education was disrupted by his illness. He studied at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques, taking licences in law and in literature. In 1896, he published his first book, Les Plaisirs et les jours (Pleasures and Days), a collection of short stories, essays and poems. In 1895, he began writing an autobiographical novel, Jean Santeuil, which he never finished. He published a number of articles on Ruskin, as well as translations of two of his books, La Bible d'Amiens (1904) and Sésame et les Lys (1906). Proust died in 1922 at age 51 of pneumonia exacerbated by asthma.