Aunt Léonie, her house, and the reality of Illiers

It is generally thought that Aunt Léonie from La Recherche was directly inspired by Proust’s aunt, Élisabeth Amiot. However, such an attribution should be made with caution, given how little we know about the real person supposedly behind this personage. Private archive documents at least reveal the ailments for which Madame Amiot was treated, and her possible resemblance to the narrator’s hypochondriac aunt.