Marcel Proust (1871–1922) is generally considered the greatest French novelist of the twentieth century and is credited with introducing to fiction the elements of psychological analysis, innovative treatment of time, and multiple themes. Proust is primarily known for his multivolume work A la recherche du temps perdu (1954), which was published in English as Remembrance of Things Past. Proust was an creative stylist as well as shrewd social observer.

In the mid-1890s Proust joined other prominent artists, including the great French novelist of the nineteenth century, Emile Zola (1840–1902), to form the protest group known as the Revisionists or Dreyfusards. The artists were staunch supporters of Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935), and therefore vocal critics of the French military, who they accused of anti-Semitism for keeping the French army officer, wrongly accused of treason, imprisoned on Devil’s Island.