South was born at Cochran Terrace in Marylebone, London, England and educated at a private school in Reading.

[1] Michael Salmon has described these as "innovative" and "a new kind of [field] guide for the [twentieth] century", noting their early use of colour photographs and eschewing of "Victorian prolixity and classical preciousness".

[1] These volumes were among the first books to use colour plates printed by the half-tone four-colour process, which had been pioneered in the 1905 edition of Rip Van Winkle (by Washington Irvine) in 1905.

[1] He also published many papers on the Lepidoptera of the Far East, including China and Korea,[4] and an account of the butterflies collected by Captain F.M.

[1] It is not clear how he earned his income: in the various censuses he describes himself as a "private secretary", editor of The Entomologist, and "writer";[9] and his highly popular guides The Butterflies of the British Isles and The Moths of the British Isles could have earned him substantial royalties.