Fabre’s Book of Insects – Adapted by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, Illustrated by E. J. Detmold (1921)
This exquisite volume brings to life the pioneering entomological studies of Jean-Henri Fabre, the 19th-century French naturalist known as the “Homer of Insects,” through a lyrical adaptation by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos and stunning illustrations by Edward Julius Detmold. Detmold’s intricate, color-laden plates—rendered with scientific precision and artistic grandeur—depict Fabre’s most captivating subjects: the predatory praying mantis, the industrious dung beetle, the cunning cuckoo bee, and the tragic peacock moth, among others.
Fabre’s observations, distilled here for a general audience, reveal the drama and ingenuity of insect behavior: wasps that paralyze prey with surgical precision, caterpillars that spin mathematical cocoons, and beetles that navigate by starlight. Detmold’s art elevates these vignettes into visual poetry, his Japanese woodcut-inspired compositions balancing delicate detail with bold, almost mythic scale.
A marriage of science and art, this book is a testament to the wonder hidden in the undergrowth—where Fabre’s curiosity and Detmold’s brush transform “lowly” creatures into protagonists of an epic, unseen saga.
“A golden-age gem that makes poets of beetles and philosophers of ants.”
