William Forsell Kirby was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 entomologist and folklorist

Folkloristics

Folkloristics is the formal academic study of folklore. The term derives from a nineteenth century German designation of folkloristik to distinguish between folklore as the content and folkloristics as its study, much as language is distinguished from linguistics...

.

He was born in Leicester

Leicester

Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...

. He was the eldest son of Samuel Kirby, who was a banker. He was educated privately, and became interested in butterflies and moths

Moths

Moths may refer to:* Gustav Moths , German rower* The Moths!, an English indie rock band* MOTHS, members of the Memorable Order of Tin Hats...

 at an early age. The family moved to Brighton, where he became acquainted with Henry Cooke, Frederick Merrifield and J N Winter. He published the Manual of European Butterflies in 1862.

In 1867 he became a curator in the Museum of the Royal Dublin Society

Royal Dublin Society

The Royal Dublin Society was founded on 25 June 1731 to "to promote and develop agriculture, arts, industry, and science in Ireland". The RDS is synonymous with its main premises in Ballsbridge in Dublin, Ireland...

, and produced a Synonymic Catalogue of Diurnal Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera

Lepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...

 (1871; Supplement 1877).

In 1879 Kirby joined the staff of the Natural History Museum

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London, England . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road...

 as an assistant, after the death of Frederick Smith

Frederick Smith (entomologist)

Frederick Smith was a British entomologist.Smith worked in the zoology department of the British Museum from 1849, specialising in the Hymenoptera. In 1875 he was promoted to Assistant Keeper of Zoology...

. 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 fully translated the Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

's national epic

National epic

A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation; not necessarily a nation-state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with aspirations to independence or autonomy...

, the Kalevala

Kalevala

The Kalevala is a 19th century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and mythology.It is regarded as the national epic of Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature...

, from Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

 into English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. Kirby's translation, which carefully reproduces the Kalevala meter, was a major influence on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, who first read it in his teens.

Kirby provided many footnotes to Sir Richard Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights.

Kirby also did important work on orthopteroid

Orthopteroid

The term orthopteroid is used to denote insects which historically would have been included in the order Orthoptera. When Carl Linnaeus started applying binomial names to animals in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae in 1758, there were few animals included in the scheme, and consequently few...

 insects including a three volume Catalogue of all known species (1904, 1906, 1910). A short biography of Kirby, with particular reference to his work on phasmids was published by Bragg in 2007.

Entomology

• Manual of European Butterflies. 1862
• Synonymic Catalogue of Diurnal Lepidoptera. 1871
• Catalogue of the collection of diurnal Lepidoptera formed by the late William Chapman Hewitson of Oatlands, Walton on Thames; and bequeathed by him to the British Museum. London, John Van Voorst. iv + 246 pp.8
• A Hand-book to the Order Lepidoptera. 1896.
• Familiar butterflies and moths. 1901
• Butterflies and moths of Europe (Illustrated). 1903
• Elementary Text-book of Entomology.
• Hand-book to the order Lepidoptera. 1897
• Marvels of Ant Life. Circa 1890s
• A Synonymic Catalogue of Orthoptera. British Museum (Natural History), London. 3 volumes: 1904, 1906, 1910

He is also credited on a few other works:

• Illustrations of diurnal Lepidoptera by William Chapman Hewitson
  William Chapman Hewitson
  William Chapman Hewitson was a British naturalist, born on 9 January 1806 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and died on 28 May 1878. A wealthy collector, this naturalist was particularly devoted to the Coleoptera and the Lepidoptera and, also, to bird's nests and eggs...
  
   1863
• Natural history. by Richard Lydekker
  Richard Lydekker
  Richard Lydekker was an English naturalist, geologist and writer of numerous books on natural history.-Biography:...
  
   1897

Literary

• Kalevala the Land of Heroes. 1907. ISBN 978-0-674-50000-6
• The Hero of Esthonia and other studies in the romantic literature of that country. 1895
• Contributions to the Bibliography of the Thousand and One Nights and Their Imitations (An appendix to Volume 10 to Richard F. Burton's translation of The Nights. 1886

External links

• The Natural History Museum at South Kensington William T. Stearn ISBN 0-434-73600-7
• A handbook to the order Lepidoptera at www.archive.org.
• Elementary Text-book of Entomology Scanned version
• A manual of European butterflies, on the plan of Stainton's manual of British butterflies and moths the ill. by T. W. Wood Scanned version
• A synonymic catalogue of diurnal lepidoptera / by W. F. Kirby Scanned version
• A synonymic catalogue of neuroptera odonata, or dragonflies : with an appendix of fossil species Scanned version
• A synonymic catalogue of lepidoptera heterocera (moths.). Vol. I, Sphinges and bombyces Scanned version
• The Hero of Esthonia