Richard Bowdler Sharpe

Richard Bowdler Sharpe (22 November 1847 - 25 December 1909) was an English zoologist.

Biography

Sharpe was born in London and studied at Brighton College, The King's School, Peterborough and Loughborough Grammar School. At the age of sixteen he went to work for Smith & Sons in London. In 1864 he commenced his first ornithological work, the Monograph of the Kingfishers (1868–71).

In 1867 Sharpe was given the post of librarian of the Zoological Society, on the recommendation of Osbert Salvin and Philip Sclater. On the death of George Robert Gray in 1872 he joined the British Museum as a Senior Assistant in the Department of Zoology, taking charge of the bird collection. He became Assistant Keeper in 1895, remaining there until his death from pneumonia.

Sharpe founded the British Ornithologists' Club in 1892 and edited its bulletin. He wrote thirteen and a half of the 27 volumes of the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum (1874–1898). His handsome Birds of Paradise, published in two large volumes (over 21 inches x 14 inches) in 1891 and 1898, presented these colourful birds to the world: as Sharpe wrote in his preface, "a great number of the species are here figured for the first time". The book, with 79 hand-coloured plates, is purchased by collectors at prices around £60,000 in 2013.^[1]

Publications

• Monograph of the Paradiseidae, or Birds of Paradise, and Ptilonorhynchidae, or Bower-birds. Taylor & Francis for Henry Sotheran & Co, 1891-98.
• Hand-book to the birds of Great Britain (1894)

British Museum catalogues (CBBM)

Books of birds by Bowdler Sharpe: Male Birds of Paradise like Paradisaea decora compete for mates with elaborate patterns and displays developed by sexual selection

Richard Bowdler Sharpe

• Catalogue of the Accipitres, or diurnal birds of prey, in the collection of the British Museum. (1874).
• Catalogue of the Striges, or nocturnal birds of prey, in the collection of the British museum. (1875).
• Catalogue of the Passeriformes, or perching birds, in the collection of the British museum. Coliomorphae... (1877).
• Catalogue of the Passeriformes, or perching birds, in the collection of the British museum. Cichlomorphae, pt.I... (1879).
• Catalogue of the Passeriformes, or perching birds, in the collection of the British museum. Cichlomorphae, pt.III-[IV]... (1881–83).
• Catalogue of the Passeriformes, or perching birds, in the collection of the British museum. Fringilliformes, pt.I... (1885).
• A monograph of the Hirundinidae, (1894).
• A Monograph of The Alcedinidae, or Family of Kingfishers (1868–1871).
• Catalogue of the Passeriformes, or perching birds, in the collection of the British museum. Fringilliformes, pt.III... (1888).
• Catalogue of the Passeriformes, or perching birds, in the collection of the British museum. Sturniformes... (1890).
• Catalogue of the Picariae in the collection of the British museum. Coraciae... (1892).
• Catalogue of the Fulicariae... and Alectorides... in the collection of the British museum. (1894).
• Catalogue of the Limicolae in the collection of the British museum. (1896).
• Catalogue of the Plataleae, Herodiones, Steganopodes, Pygopodes, Alcae, and Impennes in the collection of the British museum. (1898).

References

Sources

• Mullens and Swann - A Bibliography of British Ornithology (1917)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Richard Bowdler Sharpe.

• "Biography" at Genealogy and History of the Bowdler Family
• Images from the Monograph of The Alcedinidae
• Wonders of the bird world
• A hand-book to the birds of Great Britain (Volume 1)
• A hand-book to the birds of Great Britain (Volume 2)
• A hand-book to the birds of Great Britain (Volume 3)
• A hand-book to the birds of Great Britain (Volume 4)
• A review of recent attempts to classify birds (1891)
• A monograph of the Hirundidae (1885)