Prideaux John Selby

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Eider duck
from "Illustrations of British Ornithology"
Melanitta perspicillata
from "Jardine's Illustrations of the Duck Tribe"
Prideaux John Selby
Born(1788-07-23)23 July 1788
botanist
, artist
NationalityBritish

Prideaux John Selby

botanist and natural history
artist.

Life

Selby was born in Bondgate Street in Alnwick in Northumberland, the eldest son of George Selby of Beal and Twizell (d.1804),[1] and his wife, Margaret Cook. He was educated at Durham School.[2]

He studied at University College, Oxford. He succeeded in 1804 to the family estates at Beal, and added to the landholdings there at a cost of some £14000 in about 1840. He sold the Beal estate amounting to 1,450 acres (590 ha) in 1850 for £47000 (£5,347,000 at today's prices).

He died at Twizell House and was buried in Bamburgh churchyard.

Family

In 1810, he married Lewis Tabitha Mitford (1782–1859) daughter of Bertram Osbaldeston Mitford (1748–1800) of Dennet's Hall in Leicester.[3] They had three daughters.

Work

Selby is best known for his Illustrations of British Ornithology (1821–1834), the first set of life-sized illustrations of British birds. He also wrote Illustrations of Ornithology with

William Jardine
and A History of British Forest-trees (1842).

Many of the illustrations in his works were drawn from specimens in his collection. In addition to the above works he contributed to Jardine's Naturalist's Library the volumes on the pigeons (1835) and the parrots (1836), the latter illustrated by Edward Lear. He was for some time one of the editors of the Magazine of Zoology and Botany.

His collections were sold in 1885 and became dispersed. The South African birds collected by Andrew Smith went to the Zoology Museum of the University of Cambridge.

See also

References

Further references

Bowey, K. and Newsome, M. (Ed) 2012. The Birds of Durham. Durham Bird Club.

Bibliography

External links