Anna Dacier (1647–1720)

Anne Dacier, née Le Fèvre, was born and raised in Saumur, France, a daughter of Tanneguy Le Fèvre, a humanist and classical scholar. He taught her Latin and Greek. After his death in 1672, she moved to Paris, bringing with her a translation of poems by Callimachus, which she published in 1674. She obtained further work through a friend of her father, Pierre-Daniel Huet, assistant tutor to the dauphin. He commissioned her to produce translations of several ancient Roman and Greek texts. In 1681, she published her prose versions of the poetry of Anacreon and Sappho, and over the next few years, translations of the works of Terence, Plautus, and Aristophanes. In 1683, she married André Dacier, one of her father’s students, a fellow classicist and translator. In 1699, she published a translation of the Iliad of Homer, followed in 1708 by a translation of the Odyssey, which earned her fame in France and throughout Europe. Her work introduced Homer to many French men of letters and is still esteemed as a monument of French literature.