Jacques Guérin (1902–2000) was a renowned collector of manuscripts and first editions 📓📔, who was…

Jacques Guérin (1902–2000) was a renowned collector of manuscripts and first editions 📓📔, best known for having ‘saved’ some of Proust’s furniture, personal effects and papers a few years after his death. 🪦🍂

He is the main character in the “Proust manuscripts novel”, a fantastical tale involving the author’s brother, Robert Proust, his widow, a handyman (whom Guérin initially suspects of being an opportunistic petty crook), a bookseller and a few secondary characters. 📽️🍿

What Jacques Guérin ‘saved’ is no small thing: Proust’s wrought-iron bed, in which – first on Boulevard Haussmann and later on Rue Hamelin – he wrote and edited the bulk of “the Search”. But also the famous “fur coat” in which Cocteau, Morand and others describe him, appearing in the middle of the night at the @ritzparis or elsewhere. And then other pieces of furniture from the bedroom, books and manuscripts of the novel. 🚪🪟

The collector, a great admirer of Proust and a friend of Cocteau, Genet and Violette Leduc, dispersed his vast collection in his final years through a series of high-profile auctions. But as for Proust, he had previously taken care to bequeath the bed, the fur coat and other items to the @museecarnavalet. 🫶🏻

In “Pleasures and Days of Jacques Guérin”, Carlo Jansiti – who was one of his friends and admirers, and who is also Violette Leduc’s biographer – traces Jacques Guérin’s unusual life journey and restores part of their treasure to Proust scholars. 🍀

The book was published by @editionsduseuil in May 2026.

#LeTempsretrouvé #MarcelProust #JacquesGuérin #manuscrits