 The work was published in France between 1913 and 1927.Proust paid for the publication of the first volume (by the Grasset publishing house) after it had been turned down by leading editors who had been offered the manuscript in longhand.Many of its ideas, motifs and scenes are foreshadowed in Proust's unfinished novel, "Jean Santeuil" (1896–99), though the perspective and treatment there are different, and in his unfinished hybrid of philosophical essay and story, "Contre Sainte-Beuve" (1908–09).