times with his career in the tobacco industry: to Périgord in 1872, to Bordeaux in 1874, to Le Havre in 1877, and to Paris in 1883. Bordeaux had something of an intellectual atmosphere, and though Tannery moved to Le Havre (near his parents, who lived at Caen) at his own request, he would also directly request the move to Paris, where his research and academic pursuits would be able to flourish.

It was in Paris that Tannery took on his first two major editorial works.