This study reveals reading to be one of the main activities to occupy the inhabitants of the world of Marcel Proust's novel A la recherche du temps perdu . Characters do not just read books but have access to the journals and newspapers of a rapidly expanding print industry. They receive letters and postcards from family and friends. The posters of a nascent advertising industry tempt them to spend an evening at the theatre or a holiday by the sea, and new forms of communication, such as telegraphy, enter their lives and require new strategies of deciphering. All human activity is glossed by...