Édouard Sommer (6 April 1822,

Nancy, France Nancy is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the northeastern Departments of France, French department of Meurthe-et-Moselle. It was the capital of the Duchy of Lorraine, which was Lorraine and Barrois, annexed by France under King Louis X ...

- July 1866, Paris) was a French philologist, novelist, translator, grammarian and lexicographer.

Life

Sommer took his

agrégation In France, the () is the most competitive and prestigious examination for civil service in the French public education A state school, public school, or government school is a primary school, primary or secondary school that educates all stu ...

in letters in 1846 and graduated from Dijon University in 1847 with theses on "the Character of the Genius of

Pindar Pindar (; ; ; ) was an Greek lyric, Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes, Greece, Thebes. Of the Western canon, canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar i ...

" (Paris, 1847) and "Quomodo tradi possit synonymorum graecorum doctrina" (Paris, 1847). He translated several authors from ancient Greek and Latin and published successful manuals, textbooks, grammars and dictionaries on those two languages as well as French - these were published by

Louis Hachette Louis Christophe François Hachette (; 5 May 1800 – 31 July 1864) was a French publisher who established a Paris publishing house designed to produce books and other material to improve the system of school instruction. Publications were initia ...

. Urged to do so by Hachette, he and Bernard Jullien assisted

Émile Littré Émile Maximilien Paul Littré (; 1 February 18012 June 1881) was a French lexicographer, freemason and philosopher, best known for his , commonly called . Biography Littré was born in Paris. His father, Michel-François Littré, had been a gu ...

in the creation of his French dictionary.

Selected works

*(Editor and translator) ''Oeuvres de

e'', Paris 1848 *''Manuel de style'', 2 vol., Paris 1848 *''Manuel de style épistolaire'', 2 vol., Paris 1849 *''Petit dictionnaire des synonymes français'', Paris 1849, most recently republished in 1906 *''Petit dictionnaire des rimes françaises'', Paris 1850, most recently republished in 1879 *''Lexique latin-français à l'usage des classes élémentaires'', Paris 1851, most recently republished in 1949 *''Lexique français-latin à l'usage des classes élémentaires'', Paris 1860, most recently republished in 1959 *''Cours complet de grammaire française'', Paris 1861 *''Abrégé de grammaire grecque'', Paris 1861 *''Cours complet de grammaire latine'', Paris 1861 *''Cours complet de grammaire grecque'', Paris 1862 *''Lexique grec-français'', Paris 1862, most recently republished in 1934 *''Premières notions de grammaire générale'', Paris 1864 *''Lexique de la langue de Madame de Sevigne'', 2 vol., Paris 1866, New York/Hildesheim 1973 (posthumously published by his teacher

Adolphe Regnier Adolphe Regnier (born Jacques-Auguste-Adolphe Regnier) (7 July 1804, Mainz - 20 October 1884, Fontainebleau) was a French philologist. Life and career From 1823 he was a teacher at various institutes of higher education in France, including from ...

, republished in 1973)

Bibliography (in French)

*Pierre Larousse, ''Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle'' s.v. *André Desfeuilles, "Un émule de Lhomond. Edouard Sommer, humaniste et grammairien, 1822-1866", in: ''Le Vieux papier. Bulletin de la Société archéologique, historique et artistique pour l'étude de la vie et des moeurs d'autrefois'', Paris 1959, S. 127–131 *Jean-Claude Polet (ed.) ''Patrimoine littéraire européen. Index général'', Brüssel 2000 s. v.

References

External links

* * Édouard Sommer {{DEFAULTSORT:Sommer, Edouard Writers from Nancy, France 1822 births French philologists French novelists Linguists from France French lexicographers 1866 deaths 19th-century French translators 19th-century French lexicographers