The foundation of the society began with a meeting of "gentlemen and friends of entomological science", held on 3 May 1833 in the British Museum convened by Nicholas Aylward Vigors with the presidency of John George Children.

Those present were the Reverend Frederick William Hope, Cardale Babington, William Yarrell, John Edward Gray, James Francis Stephens, Thomas Horsfield, George Thomas Rudd and George Robert Gray.

Letters of Adrian Hardy Haworth, George Bennett and John Curtis were read where they expressed their regrets to be unable to attend the meeting.

J. G. Children, F. W. Hope, J. F. Stephens, W. Yarrell and G. Rudd were elected to form a committee, with G. R. Gray as secretary.

The real date of the foundation of the society was more probably on 22 May 1833, when the members met in Thatched House Tavern, on St James's Street.

During this meeting, George Robert Waterhouse (1810–1888) was elected librarian and curator of the insects and records.

As of this meeting, foreign honorary members were elected: Johann Cristoph Friedrich Klug (1775–1856), Wilhem de Haan (1801–1855), Victor Audouin (1797–1841), Johann Ludwig Christian Gravenhorst (1777–1857), Christian Rudolph Wilhelm Wiedemann (1770–1840), Carl Eduard Hammerschmidt (1800–1874) and Alexandre Louis Lefèbvre de Cérisy (1798–1867).

In 1849, a secretary charged to collect the minutes of the meetings was named in the person of John William Douglas (1814–1905), a position he kept until 1856.

Edward Wesley Janson (1822–91), a natural history agent, publisher and entomologist was Curator of the Entomological Society collections from 1850 to 1863 and librarian from 1863 to 1874.

Edward Mason Janson (1847–1880) took over the post of curator from Frederick Smith (1805–1879) who then left to work in the British Museum.

[7] In 2016 the society held the EntoSci conference EntoSci16 with Harper Adams University to promote entomology to 14 to 18 year olds,[8] and again in 2018.

The aim of these handbooks is to provide illustrated identification keys to the insects of Britain, together with concise morphological, biological and distributional information.

In recent years, new volumes in the series have been published by Field Studies Council, and benefit from association with the AIDGAP identification guides and Synopses of the British Fauna.

In 2011 The Royal Entomological Society Book of British Insects was published with Wiley-Blackwell, aiming to summarise all of the then 558 taxonomic families of British insects,[19][20] and in 2015 published Minibeast Magic:How to Catch Invertebrates with Tricks and Treats by Roma Oxford.