William Kirby (19 September 1759 – 4 July 1850) was an English entomologist, an original member of the Linnean Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society, as well as a country rector, so that he was an eminent example of the "parson-naturalist". The four-volume Introduction to Entomology, co-written with William Spence, was widely influential.

Family origins and early studies

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Kirby was a grandson of the Suffolk topographer John Kirby (author of The Suffolk Traveller) and nephew of artist-topographer Joshua Kirby (a friend of Thomas Gainsborough's). He was also a cousin of the children's author Sarah Trimmer. His parents were William Kirby, a solicitor, and Lucy Meadows. He was born on 19 September 1759 at Witnesham, Suffolk, and studied at Ipswich School and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1781. Taking holy orders in 1782, he spent his entire working life in the peaceful seclusion of an English country parsonage at Barham in Suffolk, working at the parish church of St Mary's for 68 years, first as curate, then as rector from 1797. He assisted in the publication of pamphlets against Thomas Paine during the 1790s. His name appears on the original list of Fellows of the Linnean Society. He delivered the first of his many papers on 7 May 1793, on Three New Species of Hirudo (Linn. Trans. II, 316).

Major publications

Kirby produced his first major work, the Monographia Apum Angliae (Monograph on the Bees of England), in 1802. His purpose was both scientific and religious:

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'The author of Scripture is also the author of Nature: and this visible world, by types indeed, and by symbols, declares the same truths as the Bible does by words. To make the naturalist a religious man – to turn his attention to the glory of God, that he may declare his works, and in the study of his creatures may see the loving-kindness of the Lord – may this in some measure be the fruit of my work…' (Correspondence, 1800)

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This, the first scientific treatise on English bees, brought him to the notice of leading entomologists in Britain and abroad. Extensive correspondence followed with scientists including Alexander Macleay, Walkenaer, Johan Christian Fabricius and Adam Afzelius. 153 of the bee species, including Lasioglossum malachurum, came from Kirby's own parish.

Kirby began planning his Introduction to Entomology, a celebrated title, in 1808. This was the practical result of a friendship formed in 1805 with William Spence and appeared in four volumes between 1815 and 1826. Much of the work fell to Kirby owing to Spence's ill health. The book was illustrated by John Curtis. It reached its seventh edition in 1856. In 1830 he was invited to write one of the Bridgewater Treatises, his subject being The History, Habits, and Instincts of Animals (2 vols., 1835).

With Edward Sabine and J.E. Gray, Kirby prepared the natural history supplement for Captain William Parry's 1819–1820 polar expedition to seek the North-West Passage: his work formed the insect section of the Account of the Animals seen by the late Northern Expedition while within the Arctic Circle 1821. His friend W.J. Hooker established his contact with John Richardson