Visitor's Guide — Maison de Tante Léonie, Musée Marcel Proust

This visitor's guide accompanies the discovery of the Maison de Tante Léonie and the Musée Marcel Proust in Illiers-Combray, as they now appear to visitors following their reopening at the end of the restoration works carried out between 2021 and 2024. Conceived as a guided tour through the rooms of the house and the halls of the adjoining museum, it combines descriptions of the spaces and objects with quotations drawn from Proust's work and correspondence, along with notes devoted to the collections of paintings and drawings assembled by the Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray.

The preface by Antoine Compagnon, of the Académie française, retraces the history of the Amiot house, which became an essential site of Proustian memory, as well as its gradual consecration as a destination of literary pilgrimage for readers of À la recherche du temps perdu from around the world.

Overview

The preface by Antoine Compagnon recalls how the house in Illiers — that of Jules and Élisabeth Amiot, Marcel Proust's paternal uncle and aunt — became, thanks to the efforts of Philibert-Louis Larcher and the Société des Amis de Marcel Proust from 1947 onward, the Proustian site of memory par excellence. He retraces young Marcel's stays there between 1877 and 1880, the connections between the geographical reality of Illiers-Combray and the fictional "Combray," the first part of Du côté de chez Swann, as well as the house's role as an ideal introduction to the whole of the work.

The body of the guide offers a room-by-room tour of the House, listed as a historic monument. Each space is accompanied by a descriptive note along with excerpts from Proust's work or correspondence, allowing visitors to connect what they observe with what they have read: from the oriental drawing room to the "Salon Adrien," from the dining room to the kitchen left intact, from "Little Marcel's" bedroom to Aunt Léonie's room, where the famous madeleine was offered.

The guide also presents the adjoining museum, devoted to Proust's relationship with the arts, describing works by painters who were friends of the writer or who inspired him: Thomas Alexander Harrison, Jacques-Émile Blanche, Paul-César Helleu, John Ruskin, Giovanni Boldini, Maria Prévot and Eduardo Solá Franco. The renovation of the site was funded by the Conseil départemental d'Eure-et-Loir, with the support of the Fondation du Patrimoine (Loto du Patrimoine, Mission Stéphane Bern) and the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles Centre-Val de Loire.

Authors and Contributors

Antoine Compagnon, of the Académie française, wrote the preface to the guide. An eminent specialist in French literature, he shows how a visit to the house forms "the best introduction to the novel one could imagine."

Jérôme Bastianelli, president of the Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray, is one of the authors of the guide's texts.

Anne Imbert, secretary general of the Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray, co-authored the guide's texts.

Contents

• Preface, by Antoine Compagnon, of the Académie française
• About Marcel Proust and His Work
• The Oriental Drawing Room
• The "Salon Adrien"
• The Dining Room
• The Kitchen
• The Staircase
• "Little Marcel's" Bedroom
• Aunt Léonie's Bedroom
• Jeanne Proust's Bedroom
• The Amiot Bedroom
• Proust and the Arts
• The Garden

Bibliographic Information

• Format: paperback, 52 pages
• ISBN: 978-2-492318-25-2
• Price: 9,50 €
• Publisher: Société des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray
• Legal deposit: May 2024