[1] André Baillon received a Roman Catholic education, attending the Collège Saint Joseph in Turnhout.
[1] He moved to Brussels, where he started to write and publish in Belgian periodicals, but began to gamble and became troubled by suicidal ideation.
[3] Baillon later took up an editorial position on La Dernière Heure, a Brussels newspaper, and by the First World War he was married to Germaine Lievens, a pianist.
[3] A version of it came out in Paris as En Sabots (In Wooden Shoes) in 1922, and the retitled novel proved a critical success, attracting praise from Jean-Richard Bloch and Charles Vildrac.
[2][3] During this period he had an affair with the writer Marie de Vivier [fr], who recounted the story after his death in her novel, L'homme pointu (The Sharp Man; 1942).
[7] Le Neveu de Mademoiselle Autorité (The Nephew of Miss Authority; 1930/1932) is based on childhood experiences with his aunt.
[8][9] A. P. Coleman, in a death notice, characterises Histoire d'une Marie as a "social problem novel" and compares it with the works of "the better known" Charles-Louis Philippe.
A biography by Frans Denissen [nl] was published in Dutch (De Gigolo van Irma Ideaal) in 1998, winning the AKO Literatuurprijs and being translated into French.
Les Nouveaux Cahiers André Baillon, a periodical covering research into his works, was published in 2003–11, and its editors also held a conference in Belgium on the topic in 2007.