This study briefly charts how genetic criticism, the study of writing process, has developed in the western European context. For the purpose of illustration, it provides a comparative account of the cases of Proust, Joyce and Beckett Studies. Scholars had been consulting modern writers’ manuscript material in a traditional philological approach since the early 20^th century, and it was with the development and dissemination of French critique genetique over the latter part of the century that genetic criticism has become an independent and self-contained study of literary scholarship. Proust, Joyce and Beckett Studies feature their own different ways of addressing the conflict between the empirical and critical elements of genetic criticism, as well as the problems that their authors’ distinctive textual characters pose. This comparative historical account testifies to the fact that flexible empirical approach in applying genetic criticism contribute to the progress of both the empirical scholarship and the theoretical criticism.