Curtis was born in
Norwich to Frances and Charles Morgan Curtis. Charles Morgan died before his son had reached the age of 4. His mother, Frances, had a passion for flowers and was a professional flower grower. She encouraged her son to study natural history with a young local naturalist,
Richard Walker (1791–1870). At the age of 16 John became an
apprentice at a local
lawyer's office in Norwich but devoted his spare time to studying and drawing
insects and, with
insect collecting becoming a growing craze, he found he could make a living selling the specimens he found. At this time he became a friend of
Simon Wilkin (1790–1862) a wealthy land owner in Norfolk, eventually leaving his job to live with Wilkin at
Cossey Hall where the extensive natural history library and specimen collection afforded him the opportunity to study his emerging over-riding passion, entomology. Through Wilkin he met the entomologists
William Kirby and
William Spence. In pursuit of his passion he learned how to etch and engrave copper plates leading to his first published work, the five coloured plates and twenty uncoloured outline drawings in Kirby and Spence's
An Introduction to Entomology (1815–1826). In 1819 William Kirby accompanied Curtis to
London where Curtis met Sir
Joseph Banks, president of the
Royal Society. Banks introduced him to
Sir William Elford Leach superintendent of the Zoological Collection of the
British Museum with whom Curtis studied
conchology. Leach, in turn, introduced him to
James Charles Dale who soon became his patron. In 1824 Curtis began his monumental masterwork,
British Entomology: Being Illustrations and Descriptions of the Genera of Insects Found in Great Britain and Ireland, still widely considered as the finest nineteenth century work on the subject. It was published in monthly parts by subscription from 1824 to 1839, each part comprising 3 or more plates with descriptive texts ranging from usually 2 to as many as 10 pages. The finished work comprised 16 volumes each of 12 parts, 192 parts in all together with 770 plates (1 to 769 plus 205*), available either coloured or plain.
Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) described the illustrations of
British Entomology as "the paragon of perfection". More complete details of his professional career are given in the obituary published by the Linnaean Society in 1862 (below). By 1840 Curtis's eyesight was beginning to fail, worsening with time until it began to cause him financial problems. These were partly solved by publishing a number of entomological articles in the ''
Gardener's Chronicle, as "Ruricola", and in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society. This led to the profitable Farm Insects: Being the Natural History and Economy of the Insects Injurious to the Field Crops of Great Britain and Ireland'' published in 1860. By the end of 1856 Curtis was totally blind, living at 18 Belitha-villas (now: Belitha Villas), Islington, London and receiving a
civil list pension initially of £100 a year but later increased to £150. Many years after his death, when the original drawings for
British Entomology were up for sale, there were fears that the precious collection would be split up. The whole collection was, however, purchased by
Walter Rothschild and later bequeathed to the
Natural History Museum, where they remain today. He was a
Fellow of the
Linnaean Society of London from 1822, in 1833. He lent support to the founding of what became the
Royal Entomological Society and served as its president from 1855 to 1857. He was an honorary member of the
Société entomologique de France. ==Obituary==