Biographical dictionary

He is listed by James,T.J. (2018) as providing a special contribution either in the form of a comprehensive site list or a substantial number of records (MD 1/22)

Lived at Coombe View, Little Kimble, Bucks and had a particular interest in Ambrosia beetles. FRES from 1953. (MD 8/03)

Medical doctor, MRCS, LRCUP, who practiced for most of his professional life in Reading and Bradfield, Berks. before moving in 1932 to Kilburn, London. He died in Chichester. C. Mackechnie Jarvis, who wrote his obituary in EMM, 89, 1953, 213, notes that he was 'a genial man of somewhat excitable character' and that he had a serious motor accident in the late 1920s, but was able to continue practising although advised by his medical friends to retire.

Joy was interested in entomology, particularly Coleoptera, as a youth and subsequently wrote many articles in different Journals but particularly the EMM. His first in that journal was 'Rhizotrogus ochraceous, Knoch, a good species', 41, 1905, 16-17 and the last 'Coleoptera from a granary at Reading', 68, 1932, 85. Almost  from the outset he showed a particular interest in the beetles inhabiting nests of birds and mammals with 'Notes on three species of Microglossa', 41, 1905, 184-85, found in woodpeckers holes and the nests of sand martins. Other papers introduced many new species to Britain including Badister dilatatus Chaud., [Bembidion redtenbacheri K.Dan], [Quedius talparum Dev.], Micropeplus caelatus Er, [Cardiophorus erichsoni de Buy], Rhynchites longiceps Th. and Pityogenes trepanatus (Nord), as well as five species of Atheta which he described as new to science including A. tomlini (subsequently synonymised with A. volans Scriba) A. malleus, A. nannion (subsequently synonymised with A. parca (Muls. & Rey)) and A. britteni. Gyrphaena joyi was named after him by Wendeler.

But Joy's main work, and the one for which he is best known by all British Coleopterists, is his Practical Handbook of British Beetles published in two volumes (text and plates) in 1932. noted that he was already planning the book in the early 1920s and that it had become 'almost an obsession... Joy took the view that Fowler's keys ... were capable of considerable simplification, holding that inasmuch as a beginner's work in any case needs to be verified before publication, it was sounder to aim at say, a ninety-five per cent correct result in determination by means of a simple and rapid key than to try to secure a hundred percent correctness through the medium of a complicated key, designed to cater for the rarer and aberrant forms.' Inevitably this approach came in for criticism which probably prompted his note in EMM, 68, 1932, 175, making clear that he was already considering a supplemental publication and asking for help in compiling it. Other criticisms concerned some of his keys which were not found to be workable. The Handbook became the main source for the determination of the British fauna for more than sixty years. It was reprinted in a smaller format by Classey in 1976, and in 1995 Hodge and Jones produced a 'Supplemental' volume New British Beetles: Species not in Joy's practical handbook. Hodge and Jones noted that in order to make his book 'practical' Joy had omitted many rare and doubtfully indigenous species as well as many others considered as varieties or synonyms which were later reinstated as good species.  Their book added 650 species to the Handbook.

In addition to the Handbook Joy also published through Frderick Warne a small volume British Beetles, Their Homes and Habitats in 1933 which was reprinted several times up to 1940. In this he stressed the importance for everyone in having a hobby which took them into the fresh air and he included chapters on identifying, collecting and studying.

Following the publication of these volumes Joy appears to have lost interest in beetles. He gave his collection to the BENHS in 1933, Mackechnie Jarvis noting  that it was 'enriched by judicious exchange and in a few cases with the support of foreign examples', with the types going to the BM. From this time until the outbreak of the war he was well-known as a lecturer to schools on a number of topics including birdwatching which had long been an interest and on which he produced a book How to Know British Birds, 1936, which went through several editions.

Pederson, 2002, lists a draft article in the RES library by Joy titled The Classification of Coleoptera, 4 pps, dated 18 December 1933,  together with a misc collection of letters dating 1923-32. Harvey, Gilbert and Martin, 1996, note correspondence with the Janson family, 1902-1920, and with R.C.L.Perkins, undated, in the BM. Gilbert, 1977, records further obituaries in ERJV, 65, 1953, 96; by H. Sachtleben in Beitr. Ent., 3, 696; Ent. Bl. Biol. Syst. Kafer, 50, 1954, 123; and by P.A.Buxton in Proc. R. ent. Soc. Lond. (C) 18, 1954, 80,

BENHS 1932-35. FRES 1902- 40. (MD 10.21)