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William Forsell Kirby (January 14, 1844 - 1912) was an English entomologist and folklorist.

Born in Leicester, he was educated privately, and became interested in butterflies and moths at an early age. He published a small Manual of European Butterflies in 1862.

In 1867 he became a curator in the Museum of the Royal Dublin Society, and produced a Synonymic Catalogue of Diurnal Lepidoptera (1871; Supplement 1877).

In 1879 Kirby joined the staff of the Natural History Museum as an Assistant after the death of Frederick Smith. He published a number of catalogues, as well as Rhopalocera Exotica (1887-1897) and an Elementary Text-book of Entomology. He retired in 1909.

Kirby had a wide range of interests, knew many languages and translated (for the first time directly from Finnish, as opposed to from another language) the Finnish epic, Kalevala, into English.

[edit] Works and Achievements

[edit] Literary works

• Manual of European Butterflies. 1862
• Synonymic Catalogue of Diurnal Lepidoptera. 1871
• Familiar butterflies and moths. 1901
• Butterflies and moths of Europe (Illustrated). 1903
• Kalevala the Land of Heroes. 1907. ISBN 0-674-50000-8
• Elementary Text-book of Entomology.
• The Hero of Esthonia? and other studies in the romantic literature of that country. 1895
• Hand-book to the order Lepidoptera. 1897

He is also credited on a few other works:

• "Illustrations of diurnal Lepidoptera." by William Chapman Hewitson 1863
• "Natural history." by Richard Lydekker 1897

[edit] External links

• The Natural History Museum at South Kensington William T. Stearn ISBN 434736007
• A handbook to the order Lepidoptera Scanned version
• Elementary Text-book of Entomology Scanned version
• The Hero of Esthonia
• Works by William Forsell Kirby at Project Gutenberg