Prideaux John Selby

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Prideaux John Selby (July 23, 1788–March 27, 1867) was an English ornithologist, botanist and artist.

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).

Selby was born at Alnwick in Northumberland and studied at University College, Oxford. He succeeded to the family estate of Twizell in 1804. 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.

Selby died at Twizell and was buried in Bamburgh churchyard. 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.

The standard botanical author abbreviation P.Selby is applied to species he described.

[edit] Reference

• Mullens and Swann - A Bibliography of British Ornithology