Leading Proust scholar William C. Carter has started a website “devoted to studying and celebrating the life and works of Marcel Proust” that offers both a wealth of literary resources and an online course. Along with University of Alabama at Birmingham student Nicolas D. Drogoul, Carter has launched Proust Ink to provide access to English and French versions of the classic author’s work, a Proust encyclopedia, a social network for Proust students, media citations and film adaptations, and other useful resources. As well, in a self-paced online course available now, Carter offers 30 one-hour lectures that allow participants to study Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, also known as Remembrance of Things Past, using Scott Moncrieff’s English translation of the French masterpiece.

Carter is certainly the professor from whom one would want to take a class on the complicated French writer. He has written authoritative biographical accounts of Proust’s life, and YUP currently has in print two of Carter’s studies on Proust. The critically-acclaimed Proust in Love examines the author’s experiences with love and sexuality, including his experiences with high-class ladies and high-class prostitutes as well as men, and his attempts to “cure” his homosexuality. The Memoirs of Ernest A. Forssgren: Proust’s Swedish Valet marks the first time that Ernest Forssgren’s memoirs have been published in their entirety. A young man when he served as Proust’s last valet, Forssgren later recorded his view of the author’s life, which Carter annotates with sometimes surprising clarifications. With Proust Ink, Carter once again produces valuable resources for both new and seasoned Proust students.