Anatole Bailly

Anatole Bailly was born at Orleans on 16 December 1833 to a family of moderate wealth - his father was a director of the auditing company L'Orléanaise and his mother ran a small store selling groceries, fruit and sewing supplies.

He was then sent to Paris to prepare for entry into the École Normale Supérieure in a private institution, which he graduated from in 1853.

A competent and conscientious, but very modest, professor, Bailly authored numerous textbooks, grammars and dictionaries of Greek and Latin which were popular in French schools at the end of the 19th century.

At a national level, he was a member of the Conseil académique de Paris and the Association pour l'encouragement des études grecques en France (from its foundation in 1867), in addition to being appointed a correspondent of the Institut de France in the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1889.

He was in the process of producing a revised edition of what would come to be known as Le Bailly, when he died suddenly on 12 December 1911 in his family home, in which he had spent the greater part of his life.