"This wonderful collection of Marcel Proust's letters, selected and translated by Mina Curtiss, is both a revelatory introduction to the great writer and a treasure trove for those readers more familiar with his -- la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Mina Curtiss especially chose these letters as apt illustrations of Proust's growing sensibility and intellectual power during the gestation of the novel. Indeed, many of the characters in the book are drawn from the men and women we meet here. The letters are also exciting as an unfolding panorama of the Belle -poque and for their superb insights into literature, art, and music"--Publisher website (November 2006).