"In Search of Lost Time" follows the narrator's recollections of childhood and experiences into adulthood in the late 19th century and early 20th century aristocratic France, while reflecting on the loss of time and lack of meaning to the world. The novel began to take shape in 1909. Proust continued to work on it until his final illness in the autumn of 1922 forced him to break off. Proust established the structure early on, but even after volumes were initially finished he kept adding new material and edited one volume after another for publication. The last three of the seven volumes contain oversights and fragmentary or unpolished passages, as they existed only in draft form at the death of the author; the publication of these parts was overseen by his brother Robert.