Items related to Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff:...
C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s celebrated translation of Proust’s A La Recherche du Temps Perdu was first published in 1922 and was a work which would exhaust and consume the translator, leading to his early death at the age of just forty. Joseph Conrad told him, ‘I was more interested and fascinated by your rendering than by Proust’s creation’: some literary figures even felt it was an improvement on the original.
From the outside an enigma, Scott Moncrieff left a trail of writings that describe a man expert at living a paradoxical life: fervent Catholic convert and homosexual, gregarious party-goer and deeply lonely, interwar spy in Mussolini’s Italy and public man of letters – a man for whom honour was the most abiding principle. He was a decorated war hero, and his letters home are an unusually light take on day-to-day life on the front. Described as ‘offensively brave’, he was severely injured in 1917 and, convalescing in London, became a lynchpin of literary society – friends with Robert Graves and Noel Coward, enemies with Siegfried Sassoon and in love with Wilfred Owen.
Written by Scott Moncrieff’s great-great-niece, Jean Findlay, with exclusive access to the family archive, Chasing Lost Time is a portrait of a man hurled into war, through an era when the world was changing fast and forever, who brought us the greatest epic of time and memory that has ever been written.
From the outside an enigma, Scott Moncrieff left a trail of writings that describe a man expert at living a paradoxical life: fervent Catholic convert and homosexual, gregarious party-goer and deeply lonely, interwar spy in Mussolini’s Italy and public man of letters – a man for whom honour was the most abiding principle. He was a decorated war hero, and his letters home are an unusually light take on day-to-day life on the front. Described as ‘offensively brave’, he was severely injured in 1917 and, convalescing in London, became a lynchpin of literary society – friends with Robert Graves and Noel Coward, enemies with Siegfried Sassoon and in love with Wilfred Owen.
Written by Scott Moncrieff’s great-great-niece, Jean Findlay, with exclusive access to the family archive, Chasing Lost Time is a portrait of a man hurled into war, through an era when the world was changing fast and forever, who brought us the greatest epic of time and memory that has ever been written.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Product Description:
Charles Scott Moncrieff (1889-1930) is best known as the inspired translator of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. Written with access to his personal archive, this biography reveals Scott Moncrieff as a man of contradictions: the poetic interpreter of Proust was also a much-decorated soldier who was seriously injured in France in 1916; a convert to Catholicism, he was also a homosexual; and this sociable, well-known man of letters led a parallel life as a spy in fascist Italy.
Review:
"A first-rate, playful, moving biography" (Roger Lewis The Times)
"Elegant and even-handed biography" (Wall Street Journal)
"In a hugely readable and well researched biography, Findlay paints a triple portrait of her ancestor – as a devoted family man, homosexual Catholic and cultivated spy – who turns out to be a far more engaging and fascinating subject than one would ever have imagined" (David Robinson Scotsman)
"The final revelation of Findlay’s book is that Moncrieff was far from the perfect Proustian of our imagination. Moncrieff is a lot more fun to be around than his careful sentences might suggest" (Adam Gopnik The New Yorker)
"A fascinating read" (The Economist)
"Elegant and even-handed biography" (Wall Street Journal)
"In a hugely readable and well researched biography, Findlay paints a triple portrait of her ancestor – as a devoted family man, homosexual Catholic and cultivated spy – who turns out to be a far more engaging and fascinating subject than one would ever have imagined" (David Robinson Scotsman)
"The final revelation of Findlay’s book is that Moncrieff was far from the perfect Proustian of our imagination. Moncrieff is a lot more fun to be around than his careful sentences might suggest" (Adam Gopnik The New Yorker)
"A fascinating read" (The Economist)
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherChatto & Windus
- Publication date2014
- ISBN 10 0701181079
- ISBN 13 9780701181079
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages368
- Rating
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Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator
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Chatto & Windus
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ISBN 13: 9780701181079
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Chasing Lost Time: The Life of C.K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator
Published by
Chatto & Windus
(2014)
ISBN 10: 0701181079
ISBN 13: 9780701181079
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Hardcover
Quantity: 1
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