Shackleton Bailey was the youngest of four children born to John Henry Shackleton Bailey and Rosmund Maud. After being educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School, where his mathematician father was headmaster, Shackleton Bailey read first Classics and then Oriental Studies at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, before spending the years of the Second World War at Bletchley Park, the home of the British code-breaking efforts. He returned to Caius as a fellow in 1944, and in 1948 obtained a lectureship in Tibetan at Cambridge University. In 1955 he migrated to Jesus College, Cambridge, where, as Director of Studies in Classics, he began publishing the long series of books and articles on Latin authors that would occupy the rest of his life. He spent four more years at Caius from 1964 to 1968, this time serving as Bursar and Senior Bursar. This time, his move was reputedly because Sir Denys Page, Master of Jesus, refused to allow Shack to have a cat-flap installed in his ancient oak door. In 1968 he crossed the Atlantic, specifically to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; and in 1976 he moved to Harvard University, first as Professor of Greek and Latin, then as Pope Professor of the Latin Language and Literature. He twice served as the editor of Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. In 1988 he retired from Harvard and became an Adjunct Professor at the University of Michigan. In 1967 he married Hilary Ann Bardwell, the former wife of the British author Kingsley Amis; this marriage was dissolved in 1975. In 1994 he married Kristine Zvirbulis. He was extremely fond of cats and of classical music. In 1958 he earned the double honour of a fellowship of the British Academy and a Litt.D. degree from Cambridge; he also held an honorary Litt.D. from Dublin University, awarded in 1984. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1975. He was a member of the American Philological Association, which awarded him the Goodwin Award for Merit in 1978; a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters; an honorary member of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies; and an honorary fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. The bulk of his scholarly work focused on Latin philology and Roman history and prosopography. In retirement he prepared many editions for the Loeb Classical Library published by Harvard University Press, including those of Martial, Valerius Maximus, Statius, and the correspondence of Cicero. He died of Alzheimer's disease in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Publications (selected)
The Śatapañcāśatka of Mātṛceṭa. Sanskrit text, Tibetan translation & commentary and Chinese translation . Edited by D.R. Shackleton Bailey. With an introduction, English translation and notes.
Propertiana.
co-ed. W.S. Watt. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Epistulae. 4 v.
