John Curtis (entomologist)
John Curtis (1791-1862) was an English entomologist and illustrator. He was born in Norwich and learned his engraving skills in the workshop of his father, Charles.
At the age of 16 he became an apprentice at a local lawyer's office but devoted his spare time to studying and drawing insects and, with insect collecting becoming a growing craze, he found he could make a living selling the specimens he found. Thus, when he left his legal job, he went to London and became probably the first ever professional entomologist.
His greatest achievement was British Entomology - being illustrations and descriptions of the genera of insects found in Great Britain and Ireland, widely considered one of the finest works on the subject of the nineteenth century. It was published monthly by subscription from 1824 to 1839, each instalment featuring four plates with 2 pages of text to accompany them. The finished work consisted of 16 volumes covering 769 insect species.
Curtis suffered with poor eyesight in later life and, by the end of 1856, was totally blind. Many years after his death, when the original illustrations for British Entomology were up for sale, there were fears that the precious collection would be split up. The whole collection was, however, purchased by Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild and later bequeathed to the Natural History Museum, where they remain today.
Contacts
Curtis was a lifelong freind of the Irish entomologist Alexander Henry Haliday and of the London entomologist Francis Walker.
Works
- 1837 Second edition of A guide to the arrangement of British insects being a catalogue of all the named species hitherto discovered in Great Britain and Ireland published.Six pages of introductory matter are followed by 282 columns of insect names in two columns per page systematically arranged and followed by an index to genera. This work attributed to John Curtis was in fact co-authored by James Charles Dale, Francis Walker and Alexander Henry Haliday ;Haliday and Walker writing almost the whole of the sections on Diptera and parasitic Hymenoptera.The list contains 1500 generic and 15,000 specific names. Britain and Ireland are not separated.
- 1860 Farm Insects being the natural history and economy of the insects injurious to the field crops of Great Britain and Ireland with suggestions for their destruction Glasgow, Blackie.
External links
Biography and images of plates from British Entomology on Natural History Museum official site [1]
