Entomology at Queens’ College Cambridge 1546-2023

 

When planning a paper (Sattelle, 2022) for an on-line symposium during lockdown David Sattelle, (meeting co-organiser), who was an undergraduate and postgrad at Queens’, approached the librarian Dr Tim Eggington to inquire if the Old Library happened to have a copy of a volume by a former student of the College Thomas Penny (1532-1589). Penny arrived at Queens’ in 1546, moved on to Trinity in 1550, graduating in 1551.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

It was particularly exciting to discover that the Old Library held a copy of Insectorum sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum, co-authored by Conrad Gesner, Edward Wotton, Thomas Moffett and Thomas Penny. It was the first ever substantive European book on insects and was published long after the death of all the authors. Most of the drawings in this landmark volume are by Thomas Penny.

​

Fig1 A) Thomas Penny, an engraving by William Rogers circa 1600.

B) Title page of Insectorum sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum by Conrad Gesner, Edward Wotton, Thomas Moffett and Thomas Penny (1634) - photograph by Edmund Smith.

C) a detail of Penny’s illustration of the adult and larval forms of the swallowtail butterfly, Papilio machaon.