George Talbot (entomologist)


George Talbot FES was an English entomologist who specialised in butterflies. He wrote about 150 scientific papers, the majority being primarily systematic, consisting of the description of new species or the revision of various genera. He was also responsible for the curation and preservation of the Joicey collection of Lepidoptera prior to its accession by the Natural History Museum.

Life and career

George Talbot was born "in rather humble circumstances" in Croydon, Surrey, in 1882. As a young man, he was assistant to Percy Ireland Lathy. He then curated for the wealthy amateur butterfly collector Herbert Adams, followed by the insect dealer William Frederick Henry Rosenberg. During the First World War he worked with Arthur Bacot at the Lister Institute on trench fever and typhus diseases carried by lice.
From 1915, he was head curator of the large and increasing collection of amateur lepidopterist James John Joicey at the Hill Museum in Witley, Surrey. In 1916, supported by Oxford professor E. B. Poulton, he was granted conditional exemption from military service due to the importance of the collection. He then saw active service from 1917 in the Labour Corps followed by the Royal Army Medical Corps. Talbot wrote numerous scientific papers with Joicey during the active period of the Museum and, as head curator, was largely responsible for the condition of the collection bequeathed to the Natural History Museum in 1934.
After Joicey's death in 1932 Talbot worked at the British Museum and the Hope Department of Entomology, Oxford, and finally at the British Pest Infestation Division of the Ministry of Food.
Talbot was married in 1916 to Jessie A Barney and died in Surrey in 1952.

Contributions to Entomology

Talbot became a Fellow of the Entomological Society in 1908. He wrote about 150 papers, many of them generic revisions in the Bulletin of the Hill Museum and The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma series. His best known works are his monograph on Delias and the three Pieridae volumes of Lepidopterorum Catalogus published by Wilhelm Junk.
Through his work as an entomologist, Talbot "won for himself a position of eminence and respect in his own sphere."

Selected works

With James John Joicey: