Eliza Fanny Staveley

[7] Entomologist Frederick Smith, who worked in the zoology department of the British Museum, assisted Staveley in providing a collection of wings for study.

[8] Staveley was an associate of naturalist John Edward Gray,[7] who read papers she had prepared to the Linnean[8] and Zoological Societies of London.

Following the publication of British Insects in 1871, naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace reviewed the work for the journal Nature.

He wrote that he could:conscientiously recommend this book as admirably adapted to lead its readers to observe for themselves the varied phenomena presented by insects, and thus to become true entomologists.

[3]Horticulturist Theresa Earle also wrote favourably of her 1866 work British Spiders, describing it as: a very good book... which would tell all that anyone might want to know about these insects.