by Richard Palframan
Marcel Proust was
born in Auteuil, a suburb of Paris 0n 10 July 1871. He was the elder son of Dr
Adrien Proust and his wife Jeanne. His mother had a very difficult confinement
and Marcel was very frail, and almost died at birth. He later ascribed these
problems to the fear and deprivation suffered by his family during the Commune,
the anarchic period immediately after the defeat of France in the
Franco-Prussian war of 1870. He had his first attack of asthma at the age of
nine, and had poor health throughout his life. He was sometimes considered to
be something of a hypochondriac, but he proved his point, in a way, by dying at
the age of 51 of a combination of asthma and pneumonia.
