Jean-Dominique Bauby

 April 23,  1952 - March 9, 1997

Jean-Dominique Bauby was a French journalist, author, and editor of the French fashion magazine, Elle. Bauby was born in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, but grew up in the 1st arrondissement of Paris on Rue du Mont-Thabor, north of the Tuileries Garden, living in the building where Alfred de Musset had lived.

He began his journalism career at Combat and then Le Quotidien de Paris. He received his first by-line the day Georges Pompidou died in 1974. At age twenty-eight he was promoted to editor-in-chief of the daily Le Matin de Paris, before becoming editor of the cultural section of Paris Match. He then joined the editorial staff of Elle and later became the magazine's editor.

Bauby was in a relationship with Sylvie de la Rochefoucauld for ten years. They had a son and a daughter together. They separated when he began a relationship with Florence Ben Sadoun, also a journalist at Elle.

On December 8, 1995, at the age of 43, Bauby had a cerebrovascular seizure while driving his son to a night out at the theater. When he woke up in a hospital twenty days later, he could only blink his left eyelid. He had locked-in syndrome, in which the mental faculties remain intact but most of the body is paralyzed. In Bauby's case his mouth, arms, and legs were paralyzed, and he had lost sixty pounds in the first twenty weeks after his stroke.

Before his seizure Bauby had signed a contract to write a book. His speech therapist, Sandrine Fichou, arranged a twenty-six-letter alphabet according to the frequency of use, so he could dictate. Claude Mendibil, a ghostwriter and freelance book editor, was sent by his publisher, Robert Laffont, to take the dictation using a system called partner-assisted scanning. She recited the alphabet until Bauby blinked at the correct letter, and recorded the hundred-thirty-page manuscript letter by letter over the course of two months, working three hours a day, seven days a week.

The resulting book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, was published on Friday, March 7, 1997. It went on to become a number one bestseller across Europe and its total sales are now in the millions. 

At the age of forty-four Bauby unexpectedly died from pneumonia, two days after the publishing of his book. He is buried in a family grave at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, France.