In 1854, Wood gave up his curacy to devote himself to writing on natural history, becoming a well-known parson-naturalist of the Victorian era.

[3] However, he continued to take on priestly work, as in 1858 he accepted a readership at Christ Church, Newgate Street, and was assistant-chaplain to St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, from 1856 until 1862.

[2] After 1876 he devoted himself to the production of books and lecturing on zoology, which he illustrated by drawing on a black-board or on large sheets of white paper with coloured crayons.

These "sketch lectures," as he called them, were very popular, and made his name widely known both in Great Britain and in the United States.

Among his works are Common Objects of the Microscope; Illustrated Natural History (1853); Animal Traits and Characteristics (1860); Common Objects of the Sea Shore (1857); The Uncivilized Races, or Natural History of Man (1868) (to which Mark Twain refers in his humorous work Roughing It);[4] Out of Doors[5] (1874) (a book that was quoted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane"); Field Naturalist's Handbook (with his son Theodore Wood) (1879–80); books on gymnastics and sport; and an edition of Gilbert White's Natural History of Selborne.