Collected Works Proust, Marcel: Œuvres complètes | v.3.0 | French | Update 11 May 2014

[pynch]

This volume collects the complete writings of Marcel Proust (1871–1922, wikipedia) in their original French: the books published during his lifetime, the posthumous collections, and his translations of Ruskin books.

À LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU
Du côté de chez Swann (1913)
À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (1919)
Le côté de Guermantes (1920–21)
Sodome et Gomorrhe (1921–22)
La prisonnière (1923)
Albertine disparue (La fugitive) (1925)
Le temps retrouvé (1927)

Les plaisirs et les jours (1896)
John Ruskin: La bible d’Amiens, translated by Proust (1904)
John Ruskin: Sésame et les lys, translated by Proust (1906)
Pastiches et mélanges (1919)
Chroniques (1927)
Jean Santeuil (1952, 1971) (see update v.3.0)
Contre Sainte-Beuve (1954)
Articles et préfaces (1885–1921)

I checked and corrected the formatting by comparing the texts to print editions, assigned classes to all the special cases, made active footnotes (about 550 in the translations alone), and embedded fonts for smallcaps and beauty (and thin non-breaking spaces, see update).
The ‘articles and prefaces’ section contains the questionnaires, the texts from wikisource and the preface to Morand’s “Tendres stocks”. I have proofread those as the available texts weren’t very reliable.

There are tables of contents for the collection and the single books, and links at the end of each chapter that link back to them. I additionally linked to the section breaks in the Recherche, because 25 chapter links didn’t seem nearly enough for this slightly long novel.

And again, this isn’t complete yet. Jean Santeuil was nowhere to be found (see update v.3.0) and articles are still very scarce. I intend to update this volume when additional texts become available. So, if anyone of you knows where to find other texts or owns and could scan a book, it would be great if you could send it to me. His preface for Jacques-Emile Blanche’s “Propos de peintre” would be especially welcome.

This is my first French epub, so any feedback is greatly appreciated. Feel free to write in French, but please bear with me when I answer in English.

Best,
pynch.

Update | v.2.0 | 16 September 2012
Completely replaced the Recherche with the “Bibliothèque électronique du Québec” version and put in the thin non-breaking spaces. For good measure, I put in some drop caps.

Update | v.2.1 | 16 September 2012
Repaired the misbehaving thin spaces.

Update | v.2.2 | 28 December 2012
Corrected three typos.

Update | v.3.0 | 11 May 2014
Added the text of the 1971 edition of Jean Santeuil and Proust’s preface to Propos de peintre by Jacques-Émile Blanche.

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[anacreon]

Dear Pynch,

Did I tell you I'm French? Anyway, about La Recherche: which version did you take? I first downloaded first editions from BNF and they were terrible. Full of obvious misprints which made guessing sometimes difficult, and anyway Proust added all the time - it remained a work in progress till the end, which explains the number of versions. On paper I have the 3 volumes 1954 Pleiade edition (plus the 1971 Contre Sainte-Beuve whith Pastiche et mélanges and Essais et articles), which was superseded by a 4 volume edition, and there are many other versions. I prefer to keep the edition which I've read and reread since I was 16, and the closest I've found in free epubs is the 1946 Gallimard available on the BeQ.

What I mean is, for La recherche at least your edition needs a colophon about sources.

However, I'm deeply grateful to have everything. Many thanks once more, anacreon.

PS: Unfortunately, I have only the second series of Blanche's Propos de peintre, "Dates", précédé d'une réponse à la Préface de M. Marcel Proust au "De David à Degas", not the first volume.

[Jellby]

Great work, thanks, saves me from trying it.

I see you've used non-breaking spaces before/after some punctuation... Have you considered making them thin non-breaking spaces (see here)?

[pynch]

Originally Posted by anacreon

which version did you take?

It’s from a commercial source and my best guess is that they used the wikisource version. I did, however, change the chapter division in the second, third, and fourth part according to more recent versions, because they seemed more plausible to me.

Originally Posted by Jellby

I see you've used non-breaking spaces before/after some punctuation... Have you considered making them thin non-breaking spaces (see here)?

Thanks for the tip, Jellby, I didn’t know that the thin space (which I love, typographically speaking) existed for html. I’ve had some problems recently with modifying fonts, so I’m a little hesitant, but I will look into it.

[holymadness]

Thank you very much.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by pynch

I’ve had some problems recently with modifying fonts, so I’m a little hesitant, but I will look into it.

Good news for you; Linux Libertine includes the thin non-breaking space, so no modification is needed with it.

[pynch]

I have completely replaced the Recherche with the version from the “Bibliothèque électronique du Québec” and put in the thin non-breaking spaces, ’cause thin nothings are better than thick nothings, right?

Thanks again to anacreon and Jellby for the recommendations.

[anacreon]

Dear Pynch,

There is a problem, I suppose because of the thin non-breaking spaces Bible d'Amiens (p 185/3862) there is a ? instead of a space inside the quote-marks. This is true on my Sony PRS-T1 and on Adobe digital editions.

Best regards, anacreon

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by anacreon

There is a problem, I suppose because of the thin non-breaking spaces Bible d'Amiens (p 185/3862) there is a ? instead of a space inside the quote-marks. This is true on my Sony PRS-T1 and on Adobe digital editions.

Yes, that must be the thin non-breaking spaces, which are not supported by older ADE versions. I suggest you replace all thin spaces with   in your copy (or maybe Pynch would like to create an alternate version).

[pynch]

It wasn’t caused by the missing ADE support, but by the extra smallcaps typeface which doesn't have the thin space. I’ve already corrected it and uploaded an update (v.2.1) yesterday.

Originally Posted by Jellby

Yes, that must be the thin non-breaking spaces, which are not supported by older ADE versions. I suggest you replace all thin spaces with   in your copy (or maybe Pynch would like to create an alternate version).

[Jellby]

I haven't read this myself, but I got a report from someone who just tried it on a Kindle.

There are some instances of "mœlle", "mœlleux", "mœlleuse". As far as I know, these words are always written with "oe" and not "œ".

Apparently the inline TOC can be confusing. I mean the fact that there are links to unnamed sections, where the link has no name either, so they all look the same. Then, when a link is followed, there's no clear indication that there's a new "section" (if there's a scene break, or a centered star, those appear on the previous page).

Maybe related with this, I noticed that the split is done in a somewhat strange manner. For instance, the "swann" files are split in the middle of a chapter. swann1.html has chapter I and part of chapter II, and swann2.html starts in the 3rd "section" of chapter II. This could lead to an inconsistency in display, because sections that start in a new file may be different from others that appear mid-file (in a new page, for example). But well, maybe this is all due to the infamous 300KB filesize limit...

[pynch]

The 3 instances of mœlle.. have been fixed. Uploaded version 2.2.

Of course, the links to the section breaks don’t amount to much more than silly jokes which should only give you the feeling of control: the Recherche should be read from beginning to end anyway (it’s a real page turner, after all!). But the breaks are clearly indicated by paragraphs without indents.

The splits do indeed occur due to the filesize limit as the chapters are often much longer.

[roger64]

Bonjour

Comment ai-je pu passer à côté d'un tel trésor sans le voir? Merci beaucoup pour ce magnifique - et formidable - travail!!

Au plan technique, je suis aussi, comme vous, depuis longtemps utilisateur de Linux Libertine et depuis peu de ses espaces fines (grâce à Jellby).

Votre travail constitue désormais une référence de qualité.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by pynch

But the breaks are clearly indicated by paragraphs without indents.

That is part of the "problem". When you follow a link to such a break, you end up in a page that starts right on the top left corner, no indent, no spacing, it looks like the middle of a paragraph. I guess it would be less confusing if the anchor was placed above the break, but maybe that's just the conversion to mobi.

Besides, I believe in French typesetting it's more common to have indents in first paragraphs too (except when there's some kind of ornament at the start of a chapter).

[democrite]

This seems to be the Propos de peintre book.

http://books.google.com/books?id=hctNAAAAYAAJ