The Captive is the first volume of the section within In Search of Lost Time known as "le Roman d'Albertine" ("the Albertine novel"). The name "Albertine" first appears in Proust's notebooks in 1913. The material in volumes 5 and 6 were developed during the hiatus between the publication of volumes 1 and 2 and they are a departure of the original three-volume series originally planned by Proust. This is the first of Proust's books published posthumously.