Leonard Johnston Wills - Books and Publications

Books and Publications

Jack Wills’s publications covered a span of over seventy years. His first were two papers in 1907 about fossils in the Bromsgrove area. His last was a Palaeogeological Map produced in 1978.

Amongst the numerous papers and books, the highlights included a paper in 1910 in the Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association (Volume XXI, Part 5 pages 249–331) entitled On the Fossiliferous Lower Keuper Rocks of Worcestershire with Descriptions of some of the Plants and Animals Discovered Therein. In 1935 the same publication (Volume XLVI, Part 2 pages 211–246) published An Outline of the Palaeogeography of the Birmingham Country.

In 1947, the British Palaeontographical Society published his Monograph in two parts entitled British Triassic Scorpions, and in 1973 the Geological Society published his Memoir entitled A Palaeogeological Map of the Palaeozoic Floor below the Permian and Mesozoic Formations in England and Wales.

His first book appeared in 1911 – a guide to Worcestershire in the Cambridge County Geographies series, published by Cambridge University Press. This covers all aspects of the county with, not surprisingly, a considerable emphasis on its geology and natural history.

However, his major works were his four imaginative and influential textbooks written between 1929 and 1956.

The first two were:

• Physiographical Evolution of Britain (Edward Arnold, 1929) and

• The Palaeogeography of the Midlands (Liverpool University Press/Hodder & Stoughton, 1948).

These presented his research into the deep structure and evolution of the British Isles and his pioneering interpretations of subsurface data.

The second two, both published after his retirement from the Chair of Geology at Birmingham, were:

• A Palaeogeographical Atlas of the British Isles (Blackie, 1951) and

• Concealed Coalfields (Blackie, 1956).

The research work embodied in these second two titles had considerable economic significance. As BP’s senior geologist Sir Peter Kent noted, the Atlas made Jack Wills a household name among petroleum geologists, and Concealed Coalfields became the bible of National Coal Board geologists.

His final publication, at the age of 93, was another Memoir published in 1978 by the Geological Society of London, entitled A Palaeogeological Map of the Lower Palaeozoic Floor below the cover of Upper Devonian, Carboniferous and Later Formations.