Fabre’s Book of Insects

In the first chapter of his Book of Insects, Jean-Henri Fabre (1823–1915) introduces the reader to his workshop — which is to say his home — located on a pebbly expanse of land near the Provençal village of Sérignan du Comtat, “where hardly any plant but thyme can grow”.
 This might seem an unpromising setting for a naturalist, but for Fabre nothing could have been more suitable than this “happy hunting-ground of countless Bees and Wasps”.
If you have already lost track of whether Fabre is talking about insects or people here, you are not alone. His ten-volume Souvenirs entomologiques, or Entomological Memoirs, made Fabre famous in France and abroad not only as a populariser but as a humaniser of insect life.
 more