Happy Birthday to Marcel Proust: Born July 10, 1871, in Paris

Coddled from the get-go.  When in In Search of Lost Time the young narrator (based on Proust of course) is discovered very upset and crying because his mother has neglected to kiss him goodnight, his grandmother, hoping to stop his tears, decides to give him his birthday presents early.  Considering "light reading as unwholesome as sweets and cakes," she gifted him with "four pastoral novels of George Sand."


"My dear," she said to Marcel's mother, "I could not allow myself to give the child anything that was not well written."


Though they rarely lived in separate residences, Marcel wrote his mother thousands of letters during her lifetime.