John Blackwall

John Blackwall (20 January 1790 – May 1881) was a British naturalist.

Blackwall lived at Hendre House near Llanrwst in north Wales from 1833 until his death. He was interested in nature from an early age, first in birds and then spiders, on which he published his first article in 1827.

He published A History of the Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland (2 vols., 1861-1864, Ray Society), which included accounts of 304 species and gave the first adequate descriptions of British spiders. Ten of the plates included were by Octavius Pickard-Cambridge and twelve were by the Irish naturalist Robert Templeton.

Read more about John Blackwall:  Correspondence With Charles Darwin, Legacy