Letters to the Lady Upstairs

Letters to the Lady Upstairs
Lydia Davis

Marcel Proust

102 Boulevard Haussmann, an elegant address in Paris’s eighth arrondissement.Upstairs lives Madame Williams, with her second husband and her harp. Downstairs lives Marcel Proust, trying to write In Search of Lost Time, but all too often distracted by the noise from upstairs.Written by Proust to Madame Williams between the years 1909 and 1919, this precious discovery of letters reveals the comings and goings of a Paris building, as seen through Proust’s eyes. You’ll read of the effort required to live peacefully with annoying neighbours; of the sadness of losing friends in the war; of concerts and music and writing; and, above all, of a growing, touching friendship between two lonely souls.

Copyright (#ulink_265c271f-4dce-5ec0-92c9-78464714d2fd)

4th Estate,

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017

First published in the United States by New Directions in 2017

First published in France as Lettres à sa voisine by Éditions Gallimard in 2013

Translation and afterword copyright © 2017 by Lydia Davis

Proust letters and critical apparatus copyright © 2013 Éditions Gallimard

Published by arrangement with Éditions Gallimard.

4th Estate is grateful to Éditions Gallimard for providing the facsimiles and photographs, and for facilitating their use in this edition.

Fascimilies of Proust’s letters are courtesy of a private collection / Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits, Paris

Photograph of Marie Williams courtesy of Gérard Emler collection

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008262891

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008262884

Version: 2017-09-19

Contents

Cover (#ud873d366-4b50-5ea6-8984-c79450ccaf81)

Title Page (#u0d3ebdc2-e4c8-5f0d-ba2c-1ed99b070a1a)

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Foreword (#ue290f97d-0c18-5157-94ef-fc2e5b7a231b)

A note on the French edition (#ue65609f5-5443-532c-a6fa-6b673b442934)

A note on the English-language edition (#u60b730e9-694c-5e64-aec0-6835e6b98b9c)

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