Little is known of Donovan's early life. He appears to have inherited a considerable fortune and to have become interested in natural history in his teens. After 1800 he made several journeys through Monmouthshire and S. Wales of which he published a very useful account in 1805 illustrated with his own drawings. By 1807 his collections of natural history objects on which he had spent many thousands of pounds were such that he was able to open them to the public as the London Museum and Institution of Natural History. This institution remained open for many years and catalogues exist.
It is for his publications, however, that Donavan is now best known. Between 1799 and 1820 he published 23 volumes of British birds, fishes, quadrupeds and shells, and 13 volumes of insects. The latter comprised The Natural History of British Insects, from 1793, in ten volumes, and General Illustrations of Entomology, 1798-1805, in three volumes. The last, which was dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks and includes some of Donovan's finest plates, is perhaps his best known work. It is subtitled Part 1. An Epitome of the Insects of Asia, elucidated in one hundred and fifty plates; with occasional observations, and descriptions after the Linnaean and Fabrician manner which suggests that the he orginally intended to produce further parts. The first volume includes the insects of China, the second those of India, and the third those of New Holland, New Zealand, New Guinea, Otaheite, and other islands in the Indian, Southern and Pacfic Oceans. J.O.Westwood subsequently edited and brought the work up to date as the Natural History of the Insects of China..., in 1842.
Instructions for Collecting and Preserving Objects of Natural History, which Donovan first published in 1794, included A Treatise on the Management of Insects in their Several states, and appeared again as a second edition in 1805 with a new title page and reprinted Preface . The Natural History of British Insects; explaining them in their several states, with periods of their transformations... Together with the history of such minute insects, as require investigation by the microscope. The whole illustrated by coloured figures ... is the most important of his books on the British Coleopterous fauna. The work which had a complicated publishing history was begun in 1792. The first volume was re-issued several times and the second volume once, which suggests that the demand for copies grew rapidly. It was not finally finished until 1813.
Donovan’s publishing activities exhausted his funds and in 1833 he published a piteous memorial To the patrons of science, literature and the fine arts respecting his losses at the hands of publishers and booksellers who, he claimed, not only retained most of his literary property, estimated at £60-70,000, but had also delayed paying him by as long as six years. In this work he states that he started publishing in 1783 and during the course of fifty years a complete set of his works would cost £100. Not all Donovan's books were received favourably. Swainson, for example, criticised his text as being ‘verbose and not above mediocrity’ and his plates as being ‘gaudy and the drawings generally unnatural’. These remarks, however, appear to apply more to his animal and bird books than to those on insects.
Donovan knew Dru Drury and prepared the sale catalogue of his collection from 4 notebooks which are now in the HDO. Smith (1986), p.75, notes that these were given to Donovan as he declined payment for his work. Many of Drury's insects passed on his death to Donovan. The HDO also houses a considerable amount of other material relating to Donovan including letters, drawings, prints, and dissected copies of his own publications. Included in this collection Smith lists a MS: ‘Coleopterous insects named in Marsham's cabinet - now in my possession’.
Donovan's collection of Coleoptera was presumably included in the sale of his London Museum and Institute of Natural History which Chalmers-Hunt (1976) notes was sold by King and Lochee between April 30 and May 2, 4-8, 1818 in 878 lots; certainly the sale catalogue mentions insects. Interestingly the sale took place at the same time as Bullock sold the contents of his London Museum of Natural History. Many of the type specimens were acquired by J. Francillon and subsequently passed to the NHM. Some idea of the price which Donovan himself was prepared to pay for specimens can be gathered from the fact that Chalmers-Hunt (1976) notes that he expended £3 3s on a single specimen of Cetonia hamata at the sale of the Leverian museum in 1806. (MD 6/02)