Jean-Denis Barbié du Bocage

He was orphaned aged nine, studied at the collège Mazarin and worked for a time in a prosecutor's chambers, where he had been sent by his mother, who hoped he would become one himself.

[1] In 1792 he was put in charge of that library's geography section, but was dismissed from that role during the Reign of Terror after having been imprisoned as a suspect on 2 September 1792.

When Louis was fully restored after the Hundred Days he made Barbié du Bocage a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, reconstituted by royal decree on 21 March 1816.

In 1821 he was one of the 217 founder members of the Société de géographie, which "was instituted to compete for the progress of geography; it undertakes voyages to unknown lands; it proposes and awards prizes; it keeps up a correspondence with learned societies, travellers and geographers; it publishes unedited narratives as well as works and engraves maps".

Author of a Précis de géographie ancienne (Summary of Ancient Geography), published in 1811 following the Abrégé de géographie (Abstract of Geography) by Pinkerton and Waldkenaer, he is best known for the maps for abbé Jean-Jacques Barthélemy's Voyage du jeune Anacharsis (1788 and 1799) and for the maps he contributed in 1782 (1st volume) and 1824 (2nd volume) to Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste Choiseul-Gouffier's Voyage pittoresque en Grèce (Picturesque Journey in Greece).

They had four children, including the geographers Jean Guillaume Barbié du Bocage (1793-1843) and Alexandre Barbié du Bocage (1798-1835), their third son Isidore-Louis (later a medical doctor after presenting a thesis on "the eruption of sudamina" in 1828 and a member of the Paris Anatomical Society until his death in 1834) and Marie-Adélaïde-Augustine (who married Antoine Lemoine, professor at the École des ponts et chaussées).