A Practical Handbook of British Beetles


A Practical Handbook of British Beetles is a two-volume work on the British beetle fauna, by Norman H. Joy, first published by H. F. & G. Witherby in January 1932.

Contents

Volume one consists of the text. Volume two contains 2040 line-drawings of whole beetles and features referred to in the keys.
The book covers a fauna of about 3560 different species and has an emphasis on species identification, being "essentially a manual of identification for the use of collectors."
A reduced-size reprint was produced by E. W. Classey in 1976, and again in 1997, while Pisces Conservation released an electronic version in 2009, solving a longstanding problem of availability.

Reception

One of the main points of attraction for Joy's book was its reasonable price. According to a 1932 review in Nature, William Weekes Fowler's standard work The Coleoptera of the British Islands was "beyond the means of most students and collectors of insects", while A Practical Handbook offered a much more affordable option.

Legacy

A Practical Handbook of British Beetles instantly became one of the important works on British coleoptera, already being referred to as a classic by the 1956 Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects volume on beetles, which uses it as one of the major works to be cross-referenced.
Despite its age, it has remained the standard work on the identification of British beetles into the 21st century, although the British Entomological and Natural History Society produced a companion volume, New British Beetles - species not in Joy's practical handbook by Peter J. Hodge and Richard A. Jones in 1995. British coleopterists refer to the book colloquially simply as "Joy".